


Them Bad Boy Blues

by Dirtcore Dreams (NakedEye)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Apathy, Casual Sex, Character Study, Class Differences, Depression, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Established Relationship, Fuckbuddies, Growing Pains, Hero Worship, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Acceptance, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Threesome - M/M/M, Toxic Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-06-23 17:16:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15611121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NakedEye/pseuds/Dirtcore%20Dreams
Summary: Ronan's sleeping with two different guys, but he's pretty sure he's in love with neither of them. In fact, he's not really sure that he knows what that means, if he's capable of it. But fuck if he's not gonna try when someone new falls into his life, someone who makes him feel like his own life is worth fighting for. (Endgame Pynch)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this one a while. It's one of those passion projects that you could sit and tweak for the rest of your life, but I figured it's been sitting on my hard drive long enough. 
> 
> Already completed, just doing final edits before I post. Hope this catches someone's interest and they connect with it. Lemme know if you like, help tamp down the anxiety consistently threatening to bury me. :P

There’s a strange sort of dissonance that comes with all the different ways of being loved, of loving others. It’s something Ronan’s never been able to maintain a very solid grasp on, but something he can’t let go of. It bothers him constantly, itching at the back of his brain like an infection. He doesn’t imagine many other people think of it, or at least that they’re not as bothered as he is. But not many other people have such a mangled sense of the emotion. 

It’s coming to a head as he lies in the silken sheets of Kavinsky’s bed—the man in question ghosting warm, damp breath into the naked crease of Ronan’s thigh, Gansey drooling down his shoulder and into his armpit—and he tells himself that gritting his teeth against it is really going to help. This creeping, anxious energy could surely be held back by sheer force of will alone. 

Ronan’s never been much of one for keeping it together, but neither is he for making scenes. Unlike the boys curled round him, he’s never had a taste for the fatalistic flair that’s meant to be your number one conversation ticket at every social gathering. People like them get so far removed from their own identities, so stuck behind the glass and put on show, that it becomes expected to have your brushes with mortality. 

Gansey got found going into anaphylactic shock by a neighbor boy. His parents were pissed he ruined his brand new birthday outfit. Kavinsky’s foamed at the mouth as his muscles seized and his eyes rolled back enough times to make a tableau of the pose. Ronan nearly bled out between the pews of his local church. They envy his imagery but not so much the raised scars that crosshatch across his forearms. 

That’s the point, his meaning. Swapping these macabre tales are just part of their Tuesday, so to be having some sort of existential meltdown about why he doesn’t love the guys he’s fucking the way he thinks he should is beyond fathoming. Regardless, he feels he’s about to have a new story to share over cucumber sandwiches the next time Helen throws an engagement. Whether he’s the one telling it, or if they’ll be whispering about the morbid details of his absence, he’s not sure, but for either case he’s got a good plan. 

Wrapping his car around a lamppost. Will kill him quick if it does. Might cremate him in his seat if the gas tank leaks. Wouldn’t that make quite the cover photo? If he survives, he can brag about it. No more pitying murmurs about the Lynch boy that tried to cut himself to ribbons—poor, pathetic thing. No more dabbing cover-up over his arms at Declan’s request and hoping he doesn’t sweat the cakey shit right off. 

They’d have that awe in their voices like they do when K tells them about shooting up in a planetarium, convulsing under the blanket of artificial stars and seeing meaning in the patterns as his heart is thundering hard enough to explode. If he doesn’t OD, it’ll probably go out on him easy enough. His parents will pay for a pacemaker, he’ll dare Prokopenko to wave magnets over it to see if it makes him feel something. 

Everyone will think Ronan’s just as nuts—caustic and unhinged. They’ll stop asking why he’s so sad, how he could do what he did. He’ll stop wondering the same things. He’ll stop feeling this way after they’re done. He’ll be like Kavinsky and Gansey, passing out with cum in his pubes, body shots dried tacky across his belly, content enough to make it to tomorrow. He won’t be lying here, grinding his molars, trying to keep his chest from jumping as he cries, sweaty back stuck to thousand dollar sheets. 

He waits out his own whimpering, brings himself down enough to focus. He dislodges Gansey first—easy enough—rolls him down his arm, tucks him in, makes sure his neck is straight so there isn’t a crick in the morning. Kavinsky was cross faded, so Ronan feels confident enough to lift his head by his hair, drop it on the bed next to his hip so he can scoot past the foot of the bed and stand. 

He can’t find his briefs, his jeans scratch against his sensitive junk. His tank top smells like sweat and club smoke. Gansey tried to hide his keys, but Ronan knows all the places he’d think of. Kavinsky’s basement apartment is filled with all that hyper-modern, minimalist bullshit—every piece of furniture just low enough to bash into Ronan’s shins on the way out. He kicks the fuckin’ leg off a coffee table and takes the pack of menthols in the keybowl on his way out. 

~~~

He fucked it up. He’s not sure if he just pussied out at the last second or if he was too wasted to manage it right, but all he’s done is scrape the bumper off the front and cave the passenger side halfway in. He didn’t even pass out when he bounced off the guardrail—just had to sit with his forehead against the steering wheel as his lights flashed and the smell of burnt rubber singed his nostrils. 

He called the insurance company as he meandered to the emergency room for stitches over his eyebrow, instructions for concussion monitoring. He got a male nurse but the guy clearly wasn’t impressed with the bile he’d spewed down his front or how he’d lost one combat boot and his big toe was sticking out of a hole in his tube sock. What a shame, Ronan could probably use someone with their shit together enough to keep down a job like that. 

If Matthew were old enough, Ronan would have  _ him  _ as his emergency contact, but as it stood, he got to be greeted come daylight with Declan staring him down, arms folded, in a fucking  _ suit  _ at six am. “What were you thinking? Are you shitting me, Ronan? I let you live with him because I thought it would help, but clearly I was mistaken. Are you even listening to me? I’m not paying to have it fixed.” 

It washes over him like a desert haze, so dry and abrasive. He’s used to the stinging pain of it, the way it scrapes across his skin and makes him feel all used up. Declan probably thinks it inspires contrition, but it just makes Ronan bubble up another well of apathy to cope. The only way out is through and no one taught him how to find a better path. 

Declan buys him McDonald’s breakfast, tucks the cheap, stiff napkins into his shirt collar to eat his perfectly round, rubbery eggs while Ronan scrapes the processed cheese off his wrappers with a blunt nail, sucking the gooey stuff between his teeth. The great thing is, they’re not even the weirdest bastards there. They don’t say anything to each other, pay with shimmery black cards, and throw away three or four things each that were only mostly eaten. 

Ronan’s back in another too-plush bed before either of his boyfriends even wake up. 

~~~

Are they his boyfriends? Kavinsky would call him a fuckin’ pansy for even thinking it, tell him to shut his mouth and turn the volume up on Boomerang as they eat sugary cereals out of ashtrays. Gansey would ask if that’s what Ronan wanted from him, if there was something more he needed—accidentally baby him until he felt like an idiot for bringing it up. 

It’s starting to get too warm to be comfortable just as his eyes are refusing to stay open. The thoughts don’t stop. He totaled the BMW for nothing. Figures. 

~~~

He’s known since they were ten and Gansey’s glasses were almost bigger than his face, when he was the only kid in school that wanted to come over to the barns and held Ronan’s hand as he received a tour of all the Lynch kid’s favorite animals— Declan the stallions, Matthew the chicks, Ronan the pigs. Ronan didn’t know then that all the parents filtered disdain down to their children because his family was new money, made their dividends in a blue collar business. He just knew that Gansey took him very seriously and he was the only person other than his mother to do that. 

It’s fourteen years later and Ronan still thinks Gansey acts quite a bit like his mother, but that’s far less romantic now. He doesn’t want to be Gansey’s precious, odd thing. He doesn’t want to be a kept boy, that fond little nuisance that makes him shake his head and sigh. They’d be lovers if they were equal. But the term that comes to mind—even when Gansey says into the join of his neck and shoulder  _ I love you, don’t you get it _ , _ why do you have to scare me like this _ ,  _ please Ronan, please,  _ hugging him close after he finally made it home and found out about the accident—is fuckbuddy. 

Ronan wishes he still had the optimism of the little boy in galoshes up to his knees, thrilled that Gansey is excited over the reedy squealing of Ronan’s favorite friends on the farm instead of calling him gross for loving to roll in the mud with them. He wishes he had enough hero worship left in that tank to keep waiting for their relationship to be more. But he’s seen Gansey sabotage each serious relationship he’s ever been in, disappear for days because he ‘can’t deal’, piss himself after falling down a flight of stairs, wasted. 

Not that Ronan’s exactly got room to speak for himself either, but the gild is off the lily and he’s realized that Gansey isn’t here to save him. Gansey’s just another fucked up, silver spoon brat like everyone else he knows. He’s probably the best of all of them— immediately jumping on the chance to take care of and baby his closest friend— but the shiniest fool’s gold still leaves something to be desired. That’s probably why they’re all entangled the way they are. Too miserable to really love each other, but no one else will take them, so it’s what they’ve got. 

If their parents’ marriages are anything to go off of, it seems an astute observation. Somewhat hating each other while staying together for decades. Sleeping with neighbors and family friends. A devastatingly effective team. If Gansey’s the simple, well meaning husband that falls in love with every new, flighty thing that passes his gaze, then Ronan supposes Kavinsky is the rough trade bastard that’s somehow gotten the upper hand in their backdoor tryst. 

It’s like a damn soap opera, which is apparently just how they like it. Ronan feeds into it, he doesn’t know how not to. He chews his lips as Gansey comes back into the apartment, drops his keys in a bowl by the door, hefts groceries onto the counter, bustles over to tisk at him and thumb at the stitches on his face. It stings, but in the moment he’s feeling like attention and Gansey’s eyes are so big and soft as they look over the lacerations, contusions, missing the real damage beneath. 

He knows it’s bratty, but he can’t help feeling as though Gansey jumped at the opportunity to throw money at this particular problem— immediately heading out to buy the banana flavored popsicles Ronan loves, ice packs and advil, new games and movies to try and occupy Ronan’s mind and time. It’s a gesture. Gestures are nice. Gansey was thinking of him, right? He’s not just trying to plop Ronan in front of a busy screen like a parent bringing an ipad for their toddler at a restaurant? 

“I still can’t believe you tried to drive like that. We should have figured you’d try something stupid, always do on tequila.” Ronan just bares his teeth in response, pulling a face as Gansey squishes his cheeks together. “At the very least, when we’re all gonna drink, keys should be locked up.” He turns away to put things in the fridge, ready the cold compress, slip off his shoes. 

“We’re always  _ all  _ gonna drink. You think K’s the devil or some shit, but that still gets you hard,” Ronan sniffs, finally moving to reach across the counter and rip open one of the popsicles. He instantly catches Gansey’s eyes to fellate it, grinning around the ice when the other boy rolls his eyes and chuckling as that makes him drool sticky yellow from the corners of his mouth. 

“What’s that prove?” Gansey bats him away for the moment, though he does tug Ronan into his bedroom, pushes him on the mattress and pops in some shitty, Kung-Fu movie from the 80’s. Ronan likes to watch him do it, smiles for real when Gansey has to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose as he studies the back of the DVD box with genuine interest, frowning and humming his discontent with the summarized plot. 

He gets caught staring and Gansey blushes, brushes back his thick hair as he shakes his head and hops to the headboard. Ronan’s all too happy to scoot back, between Gansey’s legs so he can lie against his chest. “You wanna have your kinky cake and eat it too— you’ve always been greedy, Dick.” Gansey tsks at him and flicks his ear, but Ronan continues on. “You like fucking with both of us— it’s fun— you don’t have to be all polite and prim like you are with your ladies. That thing you told me, whatever academic bullshit you wrapped it up in— “

“Bisexual, heteroromantic, it’s real, you can look it up— “

“Mm-hm, sure, and I totally  _ am  _ allergic to blowjobs with condoms on, but that’s besides the point.” Gansey gives up and grunts, turning his attention to the opening scene where a guy in a zoot suit is prowling the streets of Tokyo at night. “Point is, Richard Gansey? Boy likes to fuck. But that doesn’t fit the fantasy date bill, so he’s gotta get that elsewhere, and no-one nabs your nut as deft as K. Believe me, I get it, his dick’s like Pringles— once his boner pops, the fun don’t stop. It’s like his superpower or something. 

_ But _ , you hate the guy. And for some reason, your chivalry doesn’t  _ get  _ that hate-fucking is a thing, so you gotta justify it, make yourself feel better after. ‘I only dp-ed Ronan with him and sucked him off and made out with him while we frotted because of the  _ tequila, I swear.  _ There’s only ropes involved with  _ guys.  _ I’ve never throat-fucked  _ a lady _ . You guys just bring it out in me.’

It’s okay to be kinky Dick, you only catch shit for it because you pretend like you’re not. Same reason I Sharpied ‘queer’ over every mirror in K’s house.” Ronan shrugs, licking his popsicle stick clean and sticking it on the nightstand for Gansey to use in his diorama of the city later, as though the little gesture will soothe his blunt words. 

At the very least, Gansey chooses not to die on this hill and just silently keeps watching, letting Ronan sink into the soft, body-warm sheets and find drowsiness in the comfort of a guy holding him, a C grade movie entertaining him, flavored sugar sticking to his lips. As condescending as the plan seemed, it’s working. He’s mollified. 

Even if Gansey just wants to shut him up, wants his boy to be content with the gesture, Ronan is at least going to get the moral victory of not being treated like a kid, even as he acts like one. So he’s obnoxious through every scene— redubbing the already questionable voicework with his own juvenile dialogue— restless as he squirms and readjusts and accidentally elbows Gansey more than once, needy as he fusses and whines. 

Gansey gets tired of it by the third act, huffs out an impatient breath as he runs those square, soft hands up the front of Ronan’s shirt, petting through his dark stomach hair and up into the thin diamond at the center of his chest. Finally. Ronan quiets like a good boy, happy with his prize. So he gets his nipples tweaked, the shell of his ear nibbled, his waist clenched between Gansey’s thick thighs. 

Ronan’s in mesh basketball shorts, so it’s easy for the other hand to snake under the waistband, burrow into his briefs, start giving long, slow tugs. He rolls his head back onto Gansey’s shoulder, groans softly, breathes Gansey in. He’s always all covered up in lotions and shampoos and colognes that proudly proclaim MEN’S in big, blocky letters with black bottles and aggressive scents. K always reeks of booze and tastes like latex and does chasers of nicotine. 

Ronan craves just the simple sweat of two bodies, to smell and taste and feel just another boy in the bed, there with him. There’s some Boy-Next-Door he’s missing, some Prom Date, First Time Jitters, Pillow Talk something. He was laying into Gansey a little hard, a little facetious, but the truth is, Ronan’s only ever been fucked. He wants more than that. God, he  _ needs  _ it. His heart fucking aches for it. 

But for now, Gansey’s kissing his face. His lips are so soft, have that slight spice of mint, but the motion is rushed, the form sloppy. He’s impatient, wants it done. The grip on Ronan’s dick is too tight, too dry. There was barely any build up, his orgasm will feel like such a flash in the pan. His arm never even made it out of Ronan’s shorts, fighting with the fabric to jack him off fast, the other holding him by his waist. 

Ronan moans loudly anyway, bucks his hips and chews his lip till it splits as a Brooklyn cop cuts through rice paper screens with a katana, disco music playing over the action. They lay in bed long after the credits and it’s so close to what he thinks he’s looking for. It could be there, he knows it could. He’ll enjoy the way their leg hair rasps against each other, how Gansey’s eyes cross a little without any lenses when they start to nap, the way they their sleeping positions aren’t at odds and they stay all wrapped up even as they flop back and forth. 

He’ll almost love Gansey for getting out of bed to bring more popsicles back. He’ll almost believe Gansey loves  _ him _ for carefully saving all the sticks, feeding into the city taking up their entire living room. Ronan won’t feel like he’ll need to try anything again too soon. The back of his brain will itch. 

~~~

_ The stone digs into his knees. It’s cold and uneven, making him readjust his kneeling stance over and over again. The chalky dust of it clings to his palms, his clothes, gives flavor to the wet smell of this church. He breathes that deeply, taking in the cool, spring air, saturated with pollen and damp earth. The lush density feels suffocating.  _

_ The click of insects through the dirty, cracked windows sets about a buzz in his brain that floods his ears and makes his clenched molars rattle. He swears he can hear cicadas, even if it’s not the right season. Long minutes are spent with his hands clenched over his ears, fingers gripped like claws against his skull, eyes pressed shut so tight they hurt.  _

_ He’s sweating. More than he should, more than insulated air in this old building should warrant. It tickles the back of his neck, pools in the small of his back, clings his clothes to his frame. No matter the cinch of his eyes, it worms its way between the lids and stings, burning. _

_ But he’s cold. He’s shivering. He wishes the dingy light filtering through the air behind the altar would warm him like a sunlamp. He needs the comfort. He wants to make the pain of kneeling here worthwhile. He wants relief. He needs the gritted, spat out words he’s murmuring against his twined, proffered hands to mean something.  _

_ Glory Be.  _

_ Nicene Creed.  _

_ Act of Contrition.  _

_ Glory Be.  _

_ Act of Contrition.  _

_ Act of Contrition.  _

_ Crying. He’s crying. The sobs force his spine to bend as he curls in on himself, touching his forehead to the cool, rough stone. His sobs are so much louder than the prayers— choked off, mangled things. Like a wounded animal.  _

_ He lays himself down. He writhes. He opens his eyes and looks to the ceiling, wondering at the sky. He’s so tired, down to the dull ache in his bones. His anxious sweat has soured the perfumed air.  _

_ There’s more than one way to find peace.  _

_ Litany of Mary as the red flows and his fingers grow slick.  _


	2. Chapter 2

The garage is hard to miss. It sits on its own, away from the minor bustle of main street, stucco sides cracking and crab grass filling out its plot. Its name is painted over the top of a mural on the large wall facing the street— _ Boyd’s  _ in red, block letters, a childish rendering of the valley the town rests in below—and beside that there’s no other signs. There’s no hours posted on the door, no intake or outtake designations, no list of services offered. You know it or you don’t. You come here or you don’t. 

Ronan feels his palms sweat a little just looking at it, feeling the outsider even though he’s lived here for a couple years now. It’s pretty small, but it’s a college town so there’s just enough to keep the students busy, the nightlife interesting, but they often butt up against the established populace, the people that have been here for generations. It doesn’t tend to be very pretty, and being as abrasive as he is, that goes double for Ronan. 

He can talk the talk with them, having grown up at the Barns, but then he pulls up in his ultra modern sports car, waves around his black card, forgets that people have things like jobs and kids and responsibilities, and misses the steps of the walk. It’s earned him plenty of glares and spat obscenities in his life and, though he’s used to it now, he won’t say it’s something he’s grown callous to. 

His thumbs scrape at his palms as he gathers his courage for a moment, taking out a cigarette only for a few puffs before pinching it out, taking a deep sniff, and heading in. 

Linoleum floors, some of the tiles peeling up in the corners. Stacks of magazines years old. A vending machine with Advil and Mentos in it. 

Ronan scuffs his boots a little as he heads up to the counter, hunches his shoulders and dings the little bell for service. He won’t do it a second time. Not to purposefully be a shit like K, nor because he expected snappy, polite service like Gansey. It’s about three or four minutes of gnawing at his fingernails and adjusting his jeans not to ride up into his balls, but eventually a lumbering, neckbearded man comes to the counter. 

He’s heavy, but carries all of his weight in his shoulders, face, and back. It makes him look strangely top heavy and when he speaks, Ronan recognizes the voice from the phone. Turns out he had a hard time understanding the man, not because of the accent, but the way the words slurred out from what would become jowls in later years. “You the boy with that ridiculous, fucked up sports car?” 

Ronan just nods, smartly ignoring the little jabs that were probably meant to test his temperament. Everyone here boiled down to two behavioral varieties. Either they couldn’t help but poke and prod and try to get a rise, or they were so impassively sweet it was exhausting. Even the transplants eventually found themselves gravitating towards one or the other. 

“Guess you better go back to the garage then. Adam’s been sussin’ out what he can, you’ll work with him. Ain’t nobody else got the patience to work with luxury parts.” 

Most of that is just gibberish, utterly meaningless to Ronan. He doesn’t know who Adam is, doesn’t give a shit about the garage dynamics. He just grunts in reply and then walks over to the door he was gestured to. He doesn’t even bother to ask if that guy was the titular Boyd. 

The door’s covered in grime that instantly sticks to his hands, window caked with it to the point of uselessness, and swings open to the hiss and whir of power tools. Oddly enough, the smell of motor oil is gentler here, probably due to the open garage door, and the workers all keep to themselves for the most part, the atmosphere quiet. Underneath their clanging, a boxy, old radio plays out some warbly classic rock. It’s got an antenna extended all the way and a piece of paper excessively taped to the front, bubbled and warped with damp, marker having faded and run a long time ago. ‘ _ FIRST ONE IN GETS THE DIAL. EVERYONE ELSE SHUTS UP.’  _

He’s too busy taking it all in to notice the person approaching until he’s already there, waiting, shifting his weight from hip to hip and then snapping his fingers when he’s lost his patience. Ronan whips his head around to snap at the little fucker— _ I am not a dog,  _ ready to drip harsh and rasping off his lips—he’s even got his nose scrunched and lips twisted into a snarl, but his breath gets punched right out of him before he can even make a noise. “Glory be.” It stutters out before it’s even really a conscious thought, tripping off his lips, falling right out his traitorous fucking mouth. 

The boy isn’t catalogue-ready like Gansey, doesn’t have square, statuesque features that make him look great with a dog, better on a boat, best in a tux. He’s not got that avant garde edge that Kavinsky does. The oil dark, thick hair. The artfully shitty tattoos. The pale skin to make it all stand out. 

He’s ghostly, almost macabre. He looks like someone that should only be seen through sepia. The too young member of old civil war soldiers you fall a little strangely in love with. That picture on a tombstone you can’t help but pass by on the way to your own family. An artist’s self portrait that’s accurate but somehow cruel in its interpretation. 

Deep set eyes. Blue, but not like Ronan’s blue. Not immaculately clear, shades of cerulean reflecting off each other to make a crystalline, faceted structure. They’re blue like where the sea meets the sky in a storm. Foam and clouds and cold making them almost grey, mostly grey, not at all grey. In the shadow of his strong brow, they take on a flat, but textured matte. 

His skin is tanned, but not cruising the caribbean tanned. It’s the kind of uneven, burnt sun shading that almost looks like supple leather. Smooth over high, delicate cheekbones, cracked in spiderweb fissures across his long, elegant hands. There’s a mottling on his face— thick, dark, densely focused, almost like sunburn peeling— freckles Ronan didn’t notice at first the culprit. It’s not a dusting, but a heavy handed smatter. Across his nose and the tops of his cheeks. 

If he said all these things to anyone, if this was how he were to describe the boy in front of him, most would come to the conclusion, preemptively, that he were homely and Ronan would be offended, angry even. 

He is striking. Haunting. Stricken. Ronan feels shivers ripple across his skin and it’s the second time he can remember being cold since he moved here. He can’t stop himself from gripping his elbow with the opposite hand, hunching in a little on himself, ducking his head and clearing his throat. He’ll never get rid of the scratching rasp of his voice, but he can make it a little less cutting. 

He steps forward, looks up at the boy through his lashes, even though he’s taller. “Ronan. Ronan Lynch.” He wants to hold out his hand to shake, but that seems oddly formal, and besides if he felt those deft fingers slide along his palm he thinks he might pitch a tent right then and there. 

“Okay…“ the boy seems unimpressed, quirking a brow at him and keeping his own distance. “I asked if you’re the guy with the BMW.” 

Ronan flushes, choking on a constriction in his chest that’s got him desperate for breath. Fuck. The last time he got hit in the face with a crush this hard, this fast, he was twelve and it was Hugh fucking Dancy doing his scruffy but also sexy puppy thing on tv. “Was there anyone else scheduled to come in at three?” 

The guy winches his eyes real tight, makes his posture rigid, crosses his arms over his chest. Shit. Why couldn’t he just say nice things?  _ Hey, you look super fuckable, how about we work out a payment plan over your desk?  _ Well, maybe that wasn’t better, but still. He could’ve at least aimed for neutral. 

“Your shit’s totaled.” 

Ronan’s smirk is instant, puffing air back into his shy body and giving him a little electric thrill. Guys’ got vinegar in him. He turns without looking to see if Ronan will follow and walks over to a workstation in front of the mangled BMW. There’s a calendar with scribbled and circled due dates in the vast majority of days, scattered coursework, a spilling bag of pine nuts across the rough surface. 

“My shit seemed pretty healthy this morning, but maybe you know something I don’t know.” Is that flirting? Can talking about a dump be called flirting? Guess the classification doesn’t have to be predicated on whether it’s good or not. The guy gives him another unimpressed look, but there’s a little tug at the corner of his mouth before he turns away and Ronan  _ preens.  _

The mechanic digs through the mess on his plywood station roughly, scattering things in piles before picking up a small, well-used notebook—the spine giving no resistance to being bent in half. There’s scribbled notes and figures in an organized layout that he consults before looking back up, hesitating a moment as they lock eyes before his gaze jitters away. “It’ll be a lot cheaper for me to go junking, try and find the parts I need at scrap shops, and usually that’s what I’d recommend, but around here I could be looking for years to get ones that’ll fit.

“On the other hand, ordering them isn’t exactly a walk in the park either. Foreign cars can take months to get them shipped and if’n you’re fussy about the body work that’ll go on the list too. Either way, we’re definitely looking five figures.” He trails off there like he’s used to that being an immediate breaking point and then realizes what he’s dealing with. “I mean, it’s just a time thing. I can’t guarantee which’ll be quicker until I’ve already started in.” 

Ronan internalizes most the information. Okay, maybe half, but that’s not his fault. He hadn’t realized at first the guy has the same drawling, honeyed accent as everyone else around here. It’s slow and smooth with just enough twang to make it charming. He’s obviously tried his best to work past the uglier affectations, but Ronan didn’t miss that little “If’n” and the way he forms his vowels is obviously hard to overcome. He finds himself wondering what pillow talk might sound like in that treatment, if it would tickle his ear. 

Ronan can’t help that he only stares in answer, more than a little caught up in the fierceness of this guy’s face, the way his bone structure casts shadows across his skin. “If you pull the parts, can I come along to find them?” He tries to make it sound snobbish instead of desperate, like he’s making sure this shithole isn’t just filling his tank with sawdust and sending him off like the brat he is. Instead of looking for excuses to stalk, which… somewhat truer. 

“Why? You know anything worthwhile ‘bout cars? Or just which ones you liked the look of best with models in bikinis laying over the hood?” 

A feral grin shows his teeth as Ronan moves into the other boy’s space, planting a hand on the workbench behind him to half box him in. He’s used to the assumption, likes it even. It suits how much he gets off on shocking the shit out of people and he doesn’t have to work as hard for this one. 

The guy looks up at him, a little lost but no less defiant, meeting Ronan’s sharp gaze and not flitting away, not for a millisecond. Damn if it doesn’t make him stiff. “Not really my thing. Like lubing up grease monkeys that aren’t afraid to get rough with me much better.” It’s a come-on but also the truth. Ronan’s always loved blue collar boys better than the silver spoon crowd he’s usually stuck with. Product of growing up on a farm he supposes—but too-tight Wranglers, calloused hands, sweat and motor oil scenting their skin, the taste of cheap beer on their tongue. He shudders just at the thought. 

It’s been decently easy for him to get it over the years. He got tall early but has always been built slim. Narrow shoulders and chest, reedy waistline, long feet. He was built for ribbed tank tops and skinny jeans and hightops stretching inches past his ankles. Being as snide and slight and spoiled as he was, it was pretty much a hobby to get rough, alpha guys to take him for a ride.

Except… he was pulling away. The mechanic slid away from Ronan, face blank, shoulders squared to back him off. “I’m not your rough-trade, gutterfuck fantasy. You’re paying me to fix your car, nothing else is for sale. If that’s what you’re interested in, haul it somewhere else.” Ronan’s used to the harsh shut-down, he comes onto a lot of homophobes, but this feels dirtier. Hurt. 

“I don’t do that. I’ve  _ never  _ done that. Don’t act like you know me just cuz you’ve seen the size of my wallet.” Ronan doesn’t back from this, lets himself be angry. Just because he’s got money doesn’t mean he’s automatically some kind of gross creep. “Just because I like to fuck doesn’t mean I’ve got shit for morals. Grow some body positivity or whatever the hell it is you’re missing that’s got you jumping down my throat.” 

His fury doesn’t melt any ice. The guy stays mostly turned away, shuffles things uselessly around just to pretend to be busy. “ _ Fucking  _ isn’t something I do to pass the time and I don’t put bruises on people I care enough to be with.” He gathers up some junk and starts walking away. Ronan’s not sure if he’s meant to follow, but he sure as hell isn’t done with this, so he pushes off after. 

“Okay, okay, you’re a third date kinda guy. I respect that, believe it or not.” He tries to bring it back to that teasing place, instead of just having an outright fight. They were almost having fun there for just a second. 

“Not.” Cold. Brutal. Sexy. God it’s fucked up how much this turns him on, right? 

“You calling me loose?” He doesn’t reach out to stop the guy—what did the hulk at the counter call him? Ad… Adder? No, that’s not even a real name. Adam. “Adam!” He shouts with a little too much excitement, but it gets him to stop, to turn and look back at Ronan with the most put out expression. It makes him grin. “C’mon, gimme a shot.” 

“Who says I’m looking in the first place?” And that, right there? That says it all. If he were really as insulted and fired up as he was playing at, he wouldn’t be stepping up to bat. Ronan hooks a thumb in his belt loop, swaggers over, puts his pretty eyes to use and looks through his lashes at Adam, laying the cheese on thick. 

“You know you want it.” He bites his lip, frames his crotch with his hands, waggles his eyebrows. The lacerations from the crash put a break through one of them and he hopes it scars. It looks pretty scrappy-sexy if he says so himself. 

“You’re unbelievable.” He’s fighting a smile now. Good thing too, the sight of an honest-to-God grin might just send Ronan to that early grave he’s been chasing. But suddenly he’s not ready for it. “I don’t deal with assholes, not real ones. But you’re pretty fuckin’ poser, aren’t you?” 

Ronan blows out a breath like he’s been hit, grabs his chest and staggers. “Full back piece and I’m a poser?” He steps up to Adam again. There’s nothing to back him against this time, but the other boy doesn’t move away, so he continues until their arms nearly brush when they lean. “Pretty harsh judge. You always this… commanding?” He smirks, lets his eyes smolder a little. Hasn’t had to work this hard in a while, but it’s fun to stretch those muscles. 

Adam shrugs, shakes his head, huffing out a breathless laugh. “Only when I’m around someone this obnoxious.” Ronan miscalculated, just a little. He paid too much attention to his looks, not his expressions. He thinks they might be mirrored—rough front, tender tendencies—he likes this truth better than the previous notion. “So what? You gonna take me for lobster, show me your mini-mansion? Or tell me to take a week off and go to the coast?”

Gansey would have just struck the fuck out. He loves selling that Pretty Woman, once in a lifetime fantasy bullshit. “N’aw. I’m pretty sure you’ve got work to do. I want that car fixed and I want it done fast.” Adam raises a brow, thins his lips. “When’s your lunch though? I’m bringing burgers and if you bitch about my choice in sides, we’re done.” 

Adam smiles and it’s every ounce of Southern charm he’s been holding back. That boy next door, aw shucks, call you  _ sugar,  _ bubbles up to the surface and Ronan’s heart stops beating. He feels his face heat with a flush that his pale skin has no chance of hiding and the smug expression he’d been schooling falls slack into stunned pleasure. Adam’s smile is nothing short of gorgeous. Small dimples, crooked canine tooth, eyes that are definitely a calm, cornflower blue. 

“I guess you better bring me onion rings then.” 

~~~

Kavinsky is waiting. Ronan knows he’ll find him in the apartment, spotted his garish white Mitsubishi parked outside the building. He’s surprised the boy took this long, honestly. He plays at not giving a shit, but he craves Ronan like every other thing he’s addicted to. Ronan used to think it was romantic or some other stupid notion, but he’s got the truth of it now. 

Just like any other addiction it brings out an ugly side in Kavinsky—one that’s desperate and mean and self-important. He treats Ronan like something he can buy, use up, take a hit of and then forget about until he gets the shakes. Then suddenly it’s,  _ I need you, baby. Can’t live without you. C’mon I make it so good, don’t I? Give you everything you need?  _

The way he’d literally get on his knees for it, how his eyes would get cloudy and he’d beg with snuffling tears—Ronan thought that was what love looked like. Now it just gets him off, and he wishes it didn’t. But something about it being the only time he has the power in their relationship, the way it’s ultimate control… it feeds the nasty things inside of him, keeps it so no one else has to see but someone who likes the monster anyway. 

Kavinsky likes getting his throat fucked. Likes getting Ronan off over and over without getting any attention to his own weeping erection. Likes being thrown around, spat at, scraped with blunt nails and bitten. He thrives under the lash and Ronan’s heat is stoked feeding into it. 

He tends not to put up much resistance. When K comes rolling back on into his space, he just succumbs to the inevitability. But this time he’s got a date. He can’t disappear into that mean, drunken daze for a couple dozen hours. Adam’s been finishing up his other projects, clearing the slate so he can take the time to focus on just Ronan. 

It’s probably common practice, just how things are done, but Ronan felt utter pride in it, asked if this is how all grease monkeys asked to go steady. Adam was not impressed, but confirmed their lunch for Tuesday, said he wanted pepperjack on his burger in addition to those onion rings. Ronan’s been dragging Gansey to every burger joint in town since, the both of them pretending like nothing happened before the garage, even if they only talk in half sentences, sniffs, grunts. There’s enough excuse as they’ve had their mouths stuffed, trying every seasoning and sauce combo to make sure Ronan gets the one that’ll make Adam lick those ridiculous fingers clean and give him salty kisses after. 

Just the idea of them is enough to make the sight of Kavinsky’s car turn his stomach sour. He debates just walking away for a while, renting a shitty motel room to stay at for the night. But then Gansey would have to deal with it and even though they’re kind of fighting, it’s too shitty to leave it to him. Even if the fucker has been purposely bogarting the toilet in the middle of their red meat crisis. Worth it for the meal he’ll be bringing Adam, but he definitely put the work in. 

He flicks his thumbnail against his knuckles in the elevator, harsh enough to make them bleed, but he still gets up to their floor, moves through the kitchen, stands in the doorway of his bedroom. Kavinsky’s laid out on his bed—shirt rucked up, pants tugged down—in a way that’s nothing if not staged. No one just falls across a mattress that way. 

He hums when he sees Ronan, like the cat that caught the canary, and  _ rolls  _ on his back, stretching and smirking. “There’s my princess.” He’s devastatingly attractive, has a deep, smooth voice like an old-timey east coaster. He’s got  **Lynch** tattooed on a scroll below black roses right beside his bush, nestled in that dip of his hip bones that Ronan likes to kiss and lick. 

He  _ is _ vice. 

“Shut the fuck up, Kavinsky.” Ronan walks past him to sit at his desk. Speakers and plastic cassette tape cases make rickety towers on its surface and he picks at the detritus of tin toys and Hot Wheels that are scattered between. He keeps his back to the bed, needs the shield. “Gansey let you in or do I need to call another locksmith?” 

“C’mon, you know  _ Dick  _ isn’t interested in either of us unless his little head’s in charge for the day.” The rustle of fabric lets Ronan know he’s sliding across the mattress, the creak of the springs that he’s standing up, the warm fingers digging under his shoulder straps and into his muscles that he’s here. “When’s the last time he let you initiate, huh?”

Ronan’s never asked Gansey for sex— not outright— just opened his legs when the other boy was interested. It’s not like he hasn’t noticed that fact before, it’s just one he can’t really afford to focus on right now. Not when the apex predator of his ecosystem is right behind him, licking at the shell of his ear. “Don’t remember asking you for any either.” 

Nine times out of ten, making Kavinsky seem like he wants it, intimating that he’s legitimately gay and as in love with Ronan as he can muster is a sure-fire way to drive him off. He’s as homophobic as a half-closeted man can be while still regularly getting it, and hates being called out. But sometimes, sometimes he’s too gone to care. Sometimes he wants Ronan enough to kiss him on the mouth, hold him. 

His arms are wrapping around Ronan’s waist, he’s nuzzling at the hinge of his jaw. Ronan can’t take that right now, he just can’t. The affection eats him up inside, just as much as the neglect. He stands up, shoves the chair out to make K topple down from his squat. “I got shit to do. Go get one of your other fucks to hold themselves open for you. I’m sure Proko is gagging for it.” 

He wishes he had something to do with his hands, something to actually make it look like he had a life to get back to. Would be easier to shake Kavinsky off if it were true, but he’s just gonna be spending the rest of the evening here, waiting to see if Gansey will ask for his help with something or just stay across the hall. “What, suddenly your sloppy ass is too good for me?”

Good. Acidic he can handle. Long as Kavinsky isn’t winning him shit from claw machines and holding his hand in the tattoo parlor, he’s good. He should really throw out that stuffed pig that lives on his night stand, but it wasn’t Pork Rind’s fault he was used as leverage, and he’s a selfless cuddler. “Go home, Kavinsky,” it comes out on a sigh, as close to a plea as Ronan gets. 

He looks over his shoulder, lets his anger melt away as he watches K hunch his shoulders and toe at the floor. They could’ve been something, maybe. If they weren’t them. But does it even count then? If Kavinsky had had a good father, a mother that protected him. If Ronan’s parents had stuck around. Would they even want each other without the bite? 

“Whatever, you’ll come around asking for it later.” Kavinsky sniffs, thumbs at his nostrils, looking away the whole time. He crosses his arms and pouts and Ronan wants to kiss his full lips until it evens out. But he’s known for a while that doesn’t work. They just pull into a sneer and preempt the hand shoving his face away, pushing him down and between Kavinsky’s thighs. 

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.” There’s enough naked truth in it to get K to look at him, really  _ look  _ at him. His head whips around, hair thick with product drooping into his eyes. His jaw is jutted out as he sweeps over Ronan’s face, his tongue clicking on his palate. He’s second-guessing himself. It’s rare enough that Ronan thinks he might actually apologize, treat him sweet to keep him around. 

“Don’t be stupid. Come the fuck over.” He walks out before he can hear a reply and Ronan  _ breathes.  _

~~~

_ “Lord, have mercy.  _

_ Christ, have mercy. _

_ Lord, have mercy. _

_ God our Father ln Heaven, have mercy on us. _

_ God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us. _

_ God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us. _

_ Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. _

_ Holy Mary, pray for us. _

_ Holy Mother of God, pray for us. _

_ Most honored of virgins, pray for us. _

_ Mother of Christ, pray for us. _

_ Mother of the Church, pray for us. _

_ Mother of divine grace, pray for us. _

_ Mother most pure, pray for us. _

_ Mother of chaste love, pray for us. _

_ Mother and virgin, pray for us. _

_ Sinless Mother, pray for us. _

_ Dearest of Mothers, pray for us. _

_ Model of motherhood, pray for us. _

_ Mother of good counsel, pray for us. _

_ Mother of our Creator, pray for us. _

_ Mother of our Savior, pray for us. _

_ Virgin most wise, pray for us. _

_ Virgin rightly praised, pray for us. _

_ Virgin rightly renowned, pray for us. _

_ Virgin most powerful, pray for us. _

_ Virgin gentle in mercy, pray for us. _

_ Faithful Virgin, pray for us.”  _

_ His fingers can barely keep hold of the razor anymore.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope to be posting these pretty regularly, just gotta keep up my editing. Thanks so much if you've stuck through to this point, hope the finished product is worth it.


	3. Chapter 3

Really he should have seen the fuck-up coming. Ronan Lynch can never go too long without one, especially when he’s actually putting in effort to try and get something right. He thought he’d had all his ducks in a row, thought he’d been doing well for once. 

He’d dodged Kavinsky for the past couple days. Gansey wasn’t spitting mad at him, just the usual, ebbing sort of irritation. He had the food picked, his crush wrangled, a completely open afternoon and evening on Wednesday to go into the shop, try and work a little more magic to warm Adam up to him, learn a bit more about the mulish beauty. 

Adam seemed receptive, if reluctant. Something in him was reaching out, even if he held the leash short. It was enough for Ronan to go off of. Just a half an hour in the guy’s presence proved he was unlike any boy Ronan had ever met. Kind of strange, very surly, playfully dickish, cautiously optimistic. 

Ronan just wanted to know more. He wanted to have a couple dozen more hours just soaking Adam in, getting to see all the sides kept veiled. He liked having to work for that opportunity, liked being batted away only to be gently encouraged to try again. Maybe that made him an idiot, but he didn’t care. 

He was finally starting to understand a little what Gansey tended to go through. Something so novel. Some _ one  _ so utterly enchanting that you get dizzy with thinking after them. The rush is like a hit—instantly addictive and so, so liberating. Hefting off the weight of their gilded chains, lifting themselves right out of the routine doldrums. 

New people breathed life into their sails and let them forget for a moment. 

And maybe it was because he’d never had it happen to him before, maybe it was because he’s always had to work to smother the young romantic inside himself, but Ronan thought he might never tire of Adam, that the effervescent interest would never lose its sheen. He could just  _ feel  _ it, sitting deep in his stomach. 

He felt it the way he knew his time with his dad was limited. He felt it the way he could predict their mother fading. He felt it in the way he accepted Declan losing him in the saving of Matthew and Ronan both. He sensed the sacrifice in them all before he ever foresaw how, exactly, it would happen. 

His gut had never told him good things.  _ This boy is gonna use you up. This relief will be temporary. You’re going to need something you can’t name.  _ Maybe that was why he was already so invested. Maybe this felt like the hinge on which he could pivot, could stop the careening because— like usual— he could see the path ahead. There were warning sides all down the side of the road, and he could sense the edge fast approaching. He knows he doesn’t wanna launch off it this time. He’s not like that anymore. Not that bad anyway. Maybe Adam could show him how to use the brake. That’s all he needed, just a little help— that’s a lot to put in the hands of a stranger, and he felt guilty for it, in flashes. 

Maybe, just maybe, he had something to give back though. Maybe a boy would finally need something from Ronan that he could give. Maybe they could feed into each other instead of just watching as the other continues to eat at their tail. 

They’re the kind of thoughts that he’d been allowing himself to trail, to dally with as he sat in bed with his eyes closed and his headphones on and his tank rucked up so he could rub slow circles on his stomach as he neared dozing. Only then, his phone buzzed and buzzed and buzzed and Gansey screamed at him to just fucking pick it up and mute it at least. 

He rolled his eyes, but reached over to the nightstand anyway, knocking over a mug of pens with feather, finger puppet, and troll hair cozies as he did. He spent a full second staring forlorny at their disaster before clicking the volume on his phone, making the dull thrum of the ringer stop while the screen still blinked that Declan was looking to wring him out. 

He watched the options flash and flash until they dropped away, and then grunted at the twenty seven texts left unread. He’d only unlocked his phone to open up the app and get that notification to clear away, until he noticed that it wasn’t just K’s dick pics and Declan’s walls of text that had slipped through his fingers. 

There, in the middle of the threads, last updated yesterday, was Adam’s name. Ronan had convinced the young mechanic to go junking for the parts, to let him come along by sheer, incessant wheedling. It had net him the boy’s number, a promise to be let in on any news as he cold called and asked around after make and model. 

Ronan had forgot. There was a very finite collection of people that had his number, a rote list of reasons for why they wanted to talk. He wasn’t interested in any of them. Ignoring his phone became less than second nature. He had selective hearing for its pings the way you didn’t think about the effort of breathing ninety five percent of the time. 

It didn’t even cross his mind to keep an open ear for it now. 

His thumb trembled as he tapped at the bolded preview of text. He had to scroll to get to the first little conversation bubble. 

**Hey there, dickhead. Just wanted you to know who this was before you blocked the #.**

The day they met. Ronan couldn’t stop the little butterflies he felt at knowing that Adam texted him right after his shift, had Ronan on his mind. Even though that’s followed by bitter. 

**Got a guy that deals with lots of street racers, thinks he can help.**

**Locked a piece down. When’s good for you?**

**He’d like to offload it during weekend.**

**You got Sunday plans? Noticed the rosary. Didn’t want to assume.**

**Hello?**

**I’m going Sat, 1pm. Show up.**

**I’m here.**

**If you needed a ride, could have said.**

**Fuckin’ really?**

**I bought the shit. Didn’t negotiate price. That’s your problem.**

**Forget lunch, I’m busy.**

**Dickhead.**

It’s the same word, and even though there’s no inflection, no way to tell for sure through a screen, Ronan can  _ feel  _ that it was different. He can picture Adam’s stiff shoulders as he punches out the letters, his face impassive but his eyes stormy and wet. He thinks maybe Adam would move to throw his phone, think better of it, grip it really hard till the hinges creak. 

He’d had a flip phone when they exchanged numbers. Ronan didn’t even think they made those anymore and was utterly charmed to see Adam held an impressively high score in the game of Snake prominently featured in its menu. It had the shittiest damn camera with no flash and Ronan had hoped maybe his grainy smirk would someday make the background. 

Fuck. 

He thought of asking Gansey to help him type out something fancy-sounding, contrite and ridiculously long back. He thought of just showing up on Wednesday and pretending like his phone got bricked or something. He even thought of  _ calling,  _ of holding his roiling stomach as he tried to survive the ringtone and make it to a harsh timbre on the other side. 

He was too pussy to do any of it. He mashed out a meaningless string of emojis, erased it, formed another, erased it, took a picture of his wrinkly sheets, his eyes, his toes. He got up and grabbed his jacket. Threw it on the floor. Grabbed his doorknob, stalked to the windows. He walked in ever tightening circles near his bed and fell into it. 

He opened the thread to Kavinsky, erased the video, saved the picture, typed a draft but never hit send. A picture of just his balls hanging out his fly got sent to Noah. He read an article on how to apologize to someone—genuinely—and then groaned and hit himself in the head multiple times for how fucking pathetic that was. 

Ronan opened up the thread to Adam and swiped his thumb across the screen, letting the software string his half-stops together to form a word. 

**Hey.**

~~~

He doesn’t get a reply. 

~~~

_ “Mirror of justice, pray for us. _

_ Throne of wisdom, pray for us. _

_ Cause of our joy, pray for us. _

_ Shrine of the Spirit, pray for us. _

_ Glory of Israel, pray for us. _

_ Vessel of selfless devotion, pray for us. _

_ Mystical Rose, pray for us. _

_ Tower of David, pray for us. _

_ Tower of ivory, pray for us. _

_ House of gold, pray for us. _

_ Ark of the covenant, pray for us. _

_ Gate of heaven, pray for us. _

_ Morning star, pray for us. _

_ Health of the sick, pray for us. _

_ Refuge of sinners, pray for us. _

_ Comfort of the troubled, pray for us. _

_ Help of Christians, pray for us. _

_ Queen of angels, pray for us. _

_ Queen of patriarchs and prophets, pray for us. _

_ Queen of apostles and martyrs, pray for us. _

_ Queen of confessors and virgins, pray for us. _

_ Queen of all saints, pray for us. _

_ Queen conceived without sin, pray for us. _

_ Queen assumed in to heaven, pray for us. _

_ Queen of the rosary, pray for us. _

_ Queen of families, pray for us. _

_ Queen of peace, pray for us. _

_ Blessed be the name of the Virgin Mary now and forever.” _

_ The shakes have stopped, his body suddenly still. His muscles seem to have lost the interest in their desperate twitch. His breathing sounds so loud in the empty room, even as it’s thin, stuttering. The noise, the static, the angry just fades.  _

_ It is so still.  _

_ It is so stark.  _

_ Ronan’s arms are rested on his knees, palms turned up. The red pools. He turns his face up to the dingy windows and gazes into that dull, filtered light. He does not sway. His vision doesn’t shutter. His body simply gives. Ronan simply slumps. An effigy in waiting.  _

_ The Martyr Lynch. Patron saint of queers and fools.  _

~~~

 

Ronan shows up anyway because he’s never been much good at taking a hint, even when he’s not trying to be deliberately obtuse. 

What else was he supposed to do? Take his own shit lying down? Not gonna happen. He fucked this up in record time, but maybe if he put half the effort into making up for it that he does in appearing apathetic, he can actually ditch the mopey bull for a while. 

He’s brought along extras to sweeten the pot. Oreo shakes so thick they pass the Blizzard test, double the plastic containers of fry sauce, pastrami on the burgers. It’s enough to kill a small child and hopefully just what a guy like Adam is looking for. Ronan knows he’s been practically drooling since the hot waft of salt entered his nostrils, he’s just hoping it’s enough to let him wedge his way back in. 

He’s got two brown paper bags mottled with grease stains clutched in one fist, a cardboard carryout cup holder in the other when he sidles up to the counter at Boyd’s. Same guy’s at the counter today, but he appears to be busy, trimming a succulent. Are you supposed to do that? Ronan doesn’t know enough about houseplants to tell if it’s being abused or tended, but it just doesn’t seem right. “My guy in?”

He assumes he’ll be remembered, even if only as the asswipe rich kid that came in the other week. The guy at the counter deigns to drift his eyes over for a moment before letting them settle back on his little plant, shrugging. Ah, it’s that kind of place, is it then? He can’t exactly blame Adam for throwing a little slander around. 

“I brought a peace treaty.” He holds up his pathetic offerings, sounding more so in the way that almost comes out as a whine. “Everybody likes burgers. You tell me I won’t make his day better just by getting this in his gut.” That’s as eloquent as he gets, all that’s in the tank. 

Counter man lazily shifts his focus again, stares at the bags. Up at Ronan. Back to the garage. He rolls his shoulders a little before gesturing toward the through doors with a jut of his chin. “Kid never eats. Could do with a little fat on them bones. Just don’t fuck with him or we’ll have to fuck with you, ya?” 

Ronan grins, drops him a little collection of fries in thanks. He  _ whistles  _ as the makes his way over, bumping the swivel door open with his hip and brandishing his food with gusto. His car and Adam’s workstation are closest to the storefront, so he’s put on display immediately, doesn’t have to cut through the glare of other coworkers to make it over. 

Adam doesn’t look up. He’s penciling out some figures and names in his little book, writing meticulously even as the grease on his hands smear the page. He’s got his back turned, but his shoulders are up, clearly having heard Ronan approaching. “‘M busy. You need something or just bored?”

Ronan doesn’t let it deflate him, just plops the shakes down in front of Adam, holds the bags over his shoulder as he brackets his back, letting the mechanic feel his heat. “Gimme a second chance. Or don’t. But it would be a shame to waste this food. I’ll just throw it out if you don’t eat it.” He knows that doesn’t buy him any points, but it takes the blunt end to hammer his way back in, he can make more delicate work of the reconstruction. 

“I don’t really remember you doing anything with the first one that would make that trade worthwhile.” Fair. Tough, but fair. Ronan slides around to try and get in his line of sight, pulling his features into the most reticent smirk he has. 

Leaning back against the workbench, he scratches his thumbnail against one of the rounded corners of Adam’s book, looks up at him through his lashes, shrugs balefully. “Didn’t mean to. I fucked up, I know, but who says I was ever smooth at this, huh? Maybe I’m shit, but I’m trying my hardest and you’re being a real bitch about it.” 

Adam’s lips pull into a tight frown that says they wish they were smiling, and he swivels his stool to half turn away, moving to gnaw on his bottom lip when it can’t be restrained through sheer force of will alone. “Maybe? You’re definitely shit. A polished turd.” 

“Been called worse.” Ronan sniffs, rolls his shoulders, follows Adam’s lead with the obviously fake disinterest, the failing attempts not to smile. “You kinda like the stink though, huh?” Adam turns back to make a face at him, brow raised, mouth hung open in sheer awe at the trash fire that is Ronan’s flirting. But his shoulders are shaking with laughter and eyes are shining. 

“What is even wrong with you?” Adam reaches out to grab a melting shake, extending his tongue to run all around the lip of the cup to gather up the slow drip of it. Ronan’s throat dries up and his jeans get even tighter than he’s used to. Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “What is even wrong with me?” He murmurs it as he moves to stand, snatching one of the brown bags and heading towards a back door, not waiting to see if Ronan follows. 

He’d assumed they were heading to some kind of employee break room—fluorescent lights, plastic chairs, more vending machines—but it’s just a narrow hallway that has a tiny bathroom to the right, a locker room to the left, and a door at the end leading outside. It opens to the back of the building, a small parking lot for the workers that has grass growing out of the cracks in the asphalt, no painted spaces. Adam walks along the stuccoed wall until he gets to a corner, throws his back against the textured paint, and then slowly slides to his ass. 

Ronan just stares at him for a moment, standing, until he gets the program that this is where breaks happen. There’s cigarette butts flicked five feet away, scribbled graffiti at Adam’s current height, the smell of a piss patch around the corner. Could be worse. He’s definitely been to worse. Hell, he’s fucked braced against a dumpster in a back alley before. 

He sits cross legged, doles out the sandwiches wrapped in thin tinfoil, the boats of sides, makes sure the sauce cups are distributed evenly. If his burger isn’t dripping in it, it just won’t be worth the eating. They don’t say much for the first couple minutes, just letting the loud smack of their mouths and the crinkle of wrappers fill the air. 

Adam eats like he’s ravenous—demolishes an entire burger in five well placed, nearly unhinged jaw bites. The grease runs down his long, strong fingers and pools at his wrist but he doesn’t let it drip onto his uniform, as though that would really be shameful. His cheeks chipmunk with the sheer amount to work through, his mouth slightly open around it. He’s got half-melted cheese in the corner of his lips and Ronan has never found anything so sexy. 

_He wants to_ _be that burger._

Adam catches him watching and flushes, holds his non-sloppy hand in front of his mouth to shield the intense effort of his chewing, wriggles in embarrassment. Ronan just grins and shoves about ten fries into his maw at once, smacking around the mush and snorting when some of it plops out. Adam rolls his eyes but snorts back, kicks lightly at him with his work boot. 

He makes a show of swallowing, licks around his molars to get the rest of the food out, has to pause and suck back some of his shake before he speaks. “What exactly am I supposed to be giving you a second chance of? I don’t really remember agreeing to anything but working on your car in the first place.” The air of snobbishness is so practiced Ronan wonders how long it took to perfect. Must be essential to deal with the other collegiate shitstains like himself that act like they own this little town. 

Ronan watches him pluck up the spare hacks of pastrami that fell into his wrapper, lick his lips before tossing them into his mouth and reaching for his onion rings. “Ha! You don’t get to have your cake and eat it too. Either you’re really pissy at me cuz I stood you up, or you don’t give a shit and so why should you care if I was around to help you pick parts anyway? You already said yourself it’s not like I had anything to add.” 

Adam sucks at his teeth, brows raised as he contemplates being caught, trying to dip his rings in some of Ronan’s sauce and getting his hand slapped away for it. He smiles and his canines catch on his bottom lip, leaving little indents that Ronan wants to lick at. “Mmkay… maybe I like the attention.” He shrugs, won’t meet Ronan’s eyes. 

Fuck, Ronan loves a tease. He loves having his blood set to boil, just to be made to writhe with cool attentions after. It’s no wonder he’s managed to court some pretty toxic relationships in the past. “That’s how you’re gonna play it, huh? You get a kick out of being hard to get?”

Adam keeps his eyes on his food, scrapes his feet against the ground as he flicks at the crumbly bits of fried beer batter coating. “Maybe I’m just trying to make sure you stay interested.” It’s quiet, shy. The sudden shift comes out of nowhere, but Ronan doesn’t miss a beat, dropping his shit eating grin to take it seriously. “Why buy the cow if you can get the milk for free?” The words slur in his full-blown accent, nerves shattering the resolve he uses to try and mitigate it. 

Ronan can’t stop himself from thinking it  _ precious.  _ He scoots himself closer, wipes his hands off on his jeans. He lets himself be a little forward and rests his chin on Adam’s shoulder, breathes in the sweat on his neck, the engine oil on his uniform, the salt on his breath. “This… isn’t that. I’m not—that’s not what I want. I’ve had that, plenty. Just makes the hunger worse.” 

He lays his own shoulder into Adam’s back, puts a hand on the inside of his thigh. But he doesn’t curl it over, slide it in, squeeze or scratch. He just lets Adam feel him, get a sense of how it could be to be held. The other boy shivers, drops his head back and in doing so, drags his lips against the rasp of stubble on Ronan’s head. They both sigh into it, but Ronan’s catches in his throat when Adam’s lips move in a kind-of kiss. 

Just one, just a brush, just the hesitance of trying not to give in. “Ah don’t even know you.” It’s whispered, twangs. Ronan wants to turn his face to swallow it, but now’s not the time for that. Even he can read that. 

“You can. I’d let you. And if you knew me, you’d know that’s… “ Ronan let’s it drop away, let’s Adam figure it on his own. A hand comes up to trace patterns on his back, through his tanktop. Nails scratch against the ribbed fabric, make it pull and bunch. He arches into it, shameless. “Let me make you dinner. Doesn’t smell like piss at my place…. Most of the time.” 

Adam chuffs a laugh behind the shell of his ear, shakes his head against it before he jerks forward to nip, let it sting and burn from the tiny attack. It makes Ronan’s heart flutter. “This is stupid…” 

“Maybe.” Ronan finally turns—makes Adam look at him directly—runs their noses along each other. “We’re fuckin’ twenty-somethings. When else can we run with it anyway?” 

Adam gives him a dubious look at that, seems like he might actually say no. He thunks his head back against the wall and looks away, but his hand never stops tracing. It takes him a while to think, but Ronan doesn’t mind. He gets all those minutes to look, to commit to memory. Adam’s profile could be sold for hundreds of thousands. He’d never let it out of his private collection. Not for anything. 

“I like spaghetti, with the hotdogs cut up all little in it.” 

Ronan beams. 

“I think I can do that.” 

~~~

Repairing your relationship with Richard Gansey III is a bit like gauging a cat’s interest in cuddles. You can never predict how exactly you’re supposed to go about it, or if he’s even mad at you in the first place, might just be busy. Sometimes it only takes a nibble of attention, sometimes it takes a little bribery, sometimes he just isn’t having it and will lash out when approached. 

And it’s not exactly that he’s finicky, not really. Gansey doesn’t do it because he’s contrary or because he likes making things difficult or because he doesn’t know what he wants. Gansey, for all the fun loving, carefree energy he puts out into the world, plays everything close to the chest. He’s got this whole other self he never lets anyone glimpse at. 

Ronan’s not sure whether that was always meant to be his nature, if his family and upbringing forced its manifestation, or if his close call with death and other such experiences carved it into him. All he does know is that it’s always been this way, even when they were scabby kids with gap toothed smiles. 

Gansey’s just got this other side to him, this thing that’s just his. He doesn’t hide it away because he thinks no one could possibly understand or because it’s vulnerable and delicate. Instead, he works in levels. Family friends and future business associates get the surface level socialite, the politician’s kid, the young up and comer. The girls he meets get the rogue, the Indiana Jones wannabe, the romantic. His true friends, Ronan and Noah, they get the contrarion— the heap of pieces, the facets above the waterline, the tips of the iceberg. 

He metes out portions of himself like there’s rules about how much, where, when certain things are allowed. He’s one of those people that believes only family by blood should be allowed in on certain things, that everyone has their place and should mind it. It’s not meant to be rude, to be hurtful, even though it can be. And he’s never apologized for that when it is. 

He sticks to his ideals, in every sense. He’s never gonna make a family with Ronan, never gonna bring him all the way into the Gansey fold, and so Ronan doesn’t get to see the truth of him. He only gets to react to what he’s given. One day, someone with fit the role, he’ll open up with ease, but it’s by his hand. No one gets to pry him open. No one gets to try and prove themselves. You are or you aren’t. You get it or you don’t. 

Ronan, doesn’t. 

And so, when he’s ready to stop being a shit— when he wants to hang out with his friend again and get some advice on another beautiful, harsh boy— he’s not sure how to approach. He’s left to wonder if he just needs to wait, if he can walk up to Gansey at breakfast and just start in, if he can work a little magic on that morning wood and get pardoned in the haze of a cum dumb brain. 

It’s maddening to say the least. Ronan takes it in steps. He hangs out in the common areas of the apartment more, keeping to himself less, letting Gansey have the opportunity to approach him, if he was going to. It’s a little hard to know when the other boy is going to be around, given that neither of them have what would be called a conventional schedule. Sure, Dick has classes that he’s beholden to, but only in the barest way. His professors adore the kid so much, Gansey could never turn in an ounce of coursework and they’d pass him for his passion, his  _ zest for life.  _

Gansey could charm a homeless person out of their clothes, while in his ridiculous classic muscle car. He’d make them think it was really the only sensible thing to do, maybe even that he was doing them a favor, and he wouldn’t even break a sweat doing it. Not that he would ever, but still. Whatever it is that instantly endears you to someone, he’s got it in spades. 

It’s what’s made him such a good son, such a successful young man, such a steaming pile of shit. He’s not a bad guy though, which is a distinction that Ronan feels is very important to make in their lifestyle. They’re all a certain kind of garbage, you just gotta figure out who’s toxic or not. It comes with the territory. This much money, this much influence, it can’t not go to your head, it can’t not change the way you look at and interact with the world. It makes you make strange choices. 

Everything is relative, right? And so when you’re among the rich and powerful, you have to make a single distinction— is this person fucking evil or are they just a bastard? Gansey’s a bastard. Ronan likes to think he is too, but that’s not something he’ll ever be sure of. Kavinsky might just be evil. 

See, Gansey would never hurt an animal, Gansey would never destroy someone’s dreams, Gansey would never, knowingly be cruel. But he is, often. There’s the distinction, the fine print. Gansey, is an asshole. Gansey breaks hearts frequently, and not in that weird, patriarchal, played as adorable way. Gansey breaks hearts like it’s his life work, like he’s performing, like that’s the medium through which he speaks. 

He’s done it just about every way possible, in any manner you could think of. Neglect, jealousy, vitriol, indifference— it goes on. He’s made himself a study in sloughing commitment, of having people slick off his skin like oil. It’s part of what makes him appealing, the crux of his trap. 

It’s what draws more hapless fools onto his canvas. 

Ronan likes to think of himself as Gansey’s pièce de résistance. He’s the decade long project. He’s the thing trotted out and put on display as the pinnacle of creativity. Because Gansey’s broken him, again and again. Gansey created him. Gansey took a young, cautious, lovely boy and made him a beautiful monster. 

He broke Ronan’s heart first at something like twelve. That initial time was tentative, it was the artist’s first foray. He set a chisel to the edge of that organ, hemmed and hawed. He twirled it in place, shifted it around, all while Ronan watched with wide eyes, but didn’t ask him to stop. The threat of it held long, and the hammer came out quick. With little warning, a single tap, Gansey created the fissure that ran like spiderwebs all across the surface of Ronan’s heart. 

_ “I don’t think I get you.”  _ A freshman performance, to be sure. Even Ronan looks back at it with an almost fond pity, both for himself and for his friend. Kids are dumb. But it set about the obsession, subconscious or not. Gansey has spent years finding new ways to chip, to shatter, to melt and incinerate and wither. And then he puts the remains back together. He gathers and glues. He molds and sets. He twists and arranges. 

He makes a new thing of Ronan’s love to find a new way to break it. It’s impressive, really. Especially because Ronan’s been a willing participant for most of it. Just having the other boy’s undivided attention while he was framing his latest endeavor had been enough. Had been, might not be anymore. 

Because Ronan’s scars have finally set in his skin. The color and size and texture of them has settled into something familiar, something he’ll always know. He thinks he’s been waiting for that, somehow. He stares at them sometimes, traces over them, rubs them on his chest, his face. They made everything, suddenly, so real. There’s damage on him. He has the evidence. 

No one likes to look at it, and he loves to make them. So many sleeveless shirts because he wants them to stare. Look at me. Look at what I am. Wonder which one was because of you. Ronan put his watermark on Gansey’s pet project, scrawled his angry, ugly name all down the sides. His body, his work. He pissed in the water colors of his tragedy. 

All this to say, Ronan’s looking for Gansey, but he’s not even really sure he wants to find him. He thinks that’s what’s made this time that much more difficult. It never seemed to be much of a conscious decision before. They fought, and then, eventually, they just fell back into each other. Ronan was a moon, orbiting Gansey. They’d pass out of light of each other, but they’d always come back. 

This time  _ feels  _ different. They’re not clicking, gravity isn’t pulling. They keep pushing past, like opposite ended magnets. He’s not desperate for it anymore. He still aches, but ever since Ronan made his own art on the stone church floor, it’s not a need. He doesn’t want to crawl and beg for Gansey. He’s not happy to place his head in the other boy’s lap. 

It’s as though he bled his humors but it actually fucking worked. All that polluted affection Gansey used to remake him, that vestigial love for family that took up so much space, that unrequited yearning Kavinsky left inside him to rot— it ran down his arms and pooled at his knees and somehow, he didn’t drown in it, didn’t fade with its passing. 

Some of it’s still there, some of it will always be there. True peace, true purging would have been his death. But this amount that’s left, this irritation in his veins, it’s finally something he can bear. And with all this strength he’s no longer using to prop himself up, he thinks maybe he can find a real love to transfuse, to take up the empty space. 

He wants it to be Adam and he wants to tell Gansey that. He wants to tell Gansey that he wouldn’t be who he is without him, even if he’s not so great. So he’s looking. He’s looking for his friend, but he’s not trying too hard because it feels kind of like part of what he has to say is goodbye. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we go guys, the beginning of the end. Hope you have enjoyed it and everything clicks for you.

Having Noah Czerny as a roommate was a bit like having a stray cat you leave tuna and milk out on the porch for. Gansey swears he’s got some cougar or sugar daddy that’s super into BDSM and that’s where he disappears to for days at a time. A real 50 Shades situation with contracts and restraints and helicopters. Ronan’s more partial to the idea that he’s just a fuckin’ weirdo that sleeps outside a lot and gets lost following creeks and train tracks.

Either way, you can never really predict the patterns of when he’ll show up, or what exactly he’s there for. Sometimes it’s just to flop on someone’s bed and ask weird, existential questions until they fall asleep. Sometimes it’s to beg like a puppy for __someone__ to come longboarding with him, nowhere in particular. Sometimes he even straddles your lap, tilts his head like a bird, and asks if you wanna make out.

He’s a pretty good kisser. Ronan thinks if they fucked he’d officially have to call himself a slut instead of just __figuring things out__. Would probably be worth it. Noah’s real bitey, just as weird in his lust as everything else. He’ll wanna blow in your ear or frot nipples or whatever pops into his head and it’s real uncomfortable but tends to work out somehow.

He’s a bit like Gansey though, in his flightiness. He’ll do that with anyone, then slink away when your back’s turned and you’ll wonder if he’s dead for a couple days until he’s spotted at the dollar store, poking at kitschy ceramics. What makes it tenable is the fact that that’s just how he is. He doesn’t do any of it with purpose or planning. He’s just a funny sort of dude.

He doesn’t pick fights or try and make people jealous or give a single fuck about what you’re doing. He’s just there to… occupy your time and space for a little while. Ronan’s pretty sure Noah’s the only legitimate friend he’s got. As in, not one that he wants to be something else.

They’ve been staring at each other from across the mattress for nearly twenty minutes now. Ronan just opened his eyes in the middle of the afternoon and there Noah was, mouth breathing at him, pushing their toes together. Ronan just grunted and let him, played footsie as he slowly, slowly woke up.

He was a pretty sort of boy. Big eyes. Hair so platinum blonde it’s almost white. Gaunt sort of bone structure. When he wriggles closer he moves like a worm, not untucking his arms from where they’re huddled under his torso. He hums as he rubs their noses together and pecks at Ronan’s lips just to say hi.

“Not gonna fuck you.” There’s some extra rasp in there for his first words of the day, but Noah just flutters his eyelashes and smiles, bumps their knees.

“Mmm, Gansey said you had a new boy.” Ronan thinks it’s teasing, but sometimes Noah forgets to put inflection anywhere in his sentences and still expects you to get it. He’s __so__ fucking weird.

Ronan rolls to his side, laying on his shoulder to get his face out of the pillow starting to get too warm. “Or you just spent too long staring at me and now my morning wood’s gone.”

Noah shrugs, pokes out a finger to trace random patterns in Ronan’s chest hair. Ronan thinks he should be more hesitant about letting him. It’s not quite normal, is it? The men in Ronan’s life often serve to make him feel like an intimacy vampire, leaching moments of quiet, sparks of warmth, breaths of life. He floats from one to another, always looking for his next hit to get by for a few more days.

He’s not sure if that says more about him, or more about them. “Where’d you scamper off to?” Now that he’s paying a bit more attention, Ronan can see the bruises under his friend’s eyes, the bit of glassiness behind them. They should worry about him more. He and Gansey should make more of an effort to know where he’s at, when to expect him home. What would happen if he just never came back? Could they ever be sure that he was even still alive?

“Been around.” Noah just shrugs at him again, moves his finger to flick at one of Ronan’s nipples until it stiffens.

“You’re a fucking menace.” Ronan pulls him in by the back of his neck, tucks his face away and forces him to rest. Noah doesn’t make much noise. They doze in patches for the rest of the afternoon, flopping positions, but always in a bundle.

Come evening, Ronan puts the boy in a bath, sits on the toilet seat and watches as he soaks. Noah keeps his eyes open when he slips underneath, blows bubbles, sticks his feet up on the faucet. Gansey spots the two of them when he comes in for a soda, pops the cap with the magnetic opener on the side of the fridge. He leans against the metal, one foot propped against the door.

Ronan does his best to try and pretend like he’s not pointedly watching Noah now, like he’s not kind of cowering there on the toilet seat. He’s not sure either one of them is gonna say anything. The silence hangs tense in the air for a long time, but not even Noah acknowledges it. Even still, Gansey doesn’t make the move to leave either.

It takes several, agonizing minutes, but, eventually, Gansey leans forward and kicks at his ankles. Ronan looks up and frowns. Gansey shrugs. Ronan shrugs back. They turn to look at Noah— he’s used shampoo to arrange his hair in a drooping spike.

They talk a little, but mostly just sit, touch a little. Noah gets pruney. Ronan eventually has to piss. It’s a routine night for them, and in the morning Ronan knows he and Gansey will be friends again, over toaster waffles.

~~~

“So… you’re in love with him, but not in __that__ way, but you fuck, just not __in that way__?”

Ronan Lynch having a phone conversation. What a novel concept. A fucking stupid one, but original nonetheless. “If Gansey were telling you, I’m sure he’d have some fancy, bullshit language to do it with— quote some polyamorous poet or like, a medical journal on intimacy— but I wanna give it to you straight, no frills.”

Adam snorts and Ronan wishes they could be face to face so he could see if the other boy was fighting back his amusement like usual, or if those angular features were all twisted up— never ugly, not to Ronan— but always graduating levels of severe. “Nothing straight about it, from where I’m standing.” Ronan grins, propped up against the side of his car, squinting into the sun despite the thick, dark aviators K bought him, told him he looked sexy in.

He doesn’t really think he’ll ever be able to get rid of anything K gave him... Well, there was that one thing that went away after a few weeks of pills and some bow legged walking… plus his usual treat of too many proof alcohol and the week’s selection of uppers or downers passed through his system quick enough. The shit that was real though— the five or six things that actually mattered— he’d always have those around when he was looking for another way to mar himself with burning, angry, little cuts.

“Ya, ya, ya, Parrish. I get the message— you chase skirt just as much as anything else. Bi guys are always so damn smug about it. I’ll remind you of that next time you can’t stop staring at my hips.” They’d gone dancing. Honest to God. But not like clubbing, and not like when the goodie two shoe kids find hoedowns. It was the smell of barbeque and kids on tricycles out in the street and Adam looking at him with those hungry, hungry eyes— bobbing to the shitty music, too cool to throw himself into it like Ronan had. It felt like the most revelatory prayer.

“Psh, whatever. You’re the one asking me to be you’re like… fourth brother-husband.” Ronan snorts right back. As if any of them could possibly compete. Adam had shown up to that cul de sac in the boonies like something out of Ronan’s dreams. Hair a mess. Too thin, too large long-sleeved shirt falling off his shoulders, hanging over his hands. Shy, but eager.

It was just some shitty, local garage group. They thought they were so edgy actually playing out of a two-car on the outskirts of town, where the single story houses sprawled out in wide, winding neighborhoods. Thirty year old guys still singing about how hard it is to grow up. Ronan was so in his element. This was where he thrived.

He’d gone full flirtatious showboat, worn one of those ratty, loose tanktops that was almost just black dental floss— denim shorts that would have been mid thigh if they weren’t then given a thick cuff. Adam had looked at his hairy legs like he wanted nothing more than to __bite.__ Ronan felt so giddy he didn’t even have make an effort of keeping away from the guys with tabs and pills.

“‘s not like that, I swear. You can even come meet all of them, tell them I’m yours now, fuck me on the couch to prove it. You can buy me a shitty dog collar, make tags with your phone number on ‘em.” They __kissed.__ Ronan had answered his phone and is now audibly swooning because Adam had nibbled his lips and dug fingers into his waist on the front lawn of a stranger’s house, surrounded by idiots who stank like cheap beer. The sun was setting and everything was dreamsicle orange. The lead singer wasn’t good, but he was passionate and loud. Ronan had smiled so wide it was hard to continue the press of their lips.

“Mm, you never said you were into BDSM. I don’t know, I’m not much for the mirrored ceilings, sex swing in the garage aesthetic.” Adam’s a professional at avoiding serious topics. Ronan rarely has the courage to bring them up. It’s a real fuckin’ doozy of a combination. He never thought that he’d be the kind of guy encouraging someone to just sit down and have a real talk, but suddenly that’s all he’s chasing after. It makes him nervous, almost angry.

But just two days ago they’d been sweating through their tops while they laughed and wrestled and screamed-sang along. And they’d __kissed.__ So Ronan’s digging his heels in. “I know it’s not what you wanna hear, I probably should’ve said something a lot sooner. It’s just… weird. I don’t even really understand it most the time. But it’s not like you and me, that’s one hundred percent. They don’t want me like that. And I don’t want that from them, not anymore.”

Adam tasted like sugary pop. He’d taken one derisive look at the red plastic cup Ronan had offered to him upon arrival and made it very clear with just his eyes exactly what he thought of recreational drunks. Somehow, it wasn’t even a thing to toss the shitty stuff right onto the lawn. The siren song was ended just like that. For the first time in too long a time, Ronan didn’t need it. He was happy to plunge his hands into the melted ice of the cooler and fish them out freezing cans of sour soda. Adam let Ronan press his freezing skin against his sweating hairline, smiled softly as he raked fingers through his messy fringe.

“I don’t wanna lie to you, because I don’t want this all to go to shit like everything else does. I’ve been fucked up, okay? For a long time. And what I did with them, what it became, that’s because I couldn’t handle the real thing. I couldn’t have a regular-ass relationship. I think… I think I might even have done it to punish myself. I dunno.”

Their knees had bumped as they swayed to the slow stuff and Adam only tried once to break the tension— belching in his face and laughing like Ronan had never heard as he got his face mashed and pushed away. But then he let it be sober, let Ronan run the bridge of their noses along each other, closed his eyes and hummed along and rested their foreheads. He scratched his fingers against the naked skin of Ronan’s lower back, played with the fluffy peach fuzz nestled in the dip.  

“And now it’s just this thing that I haven’t gotten rid of because it’s been more convenient not to, but— I’m ready for it. I’m ready to let go and not keep rolling in the mud. I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for me, but you’d be a pretty awesome severance package if you wanted to come along for the ride.”

Ronan knows he hasn’t dropped the call because he can still hear the rattle and buzz of the shop coming off Adam’s end, but his kinda-sorta-maybe boyfriend doesn’t answer for a while. Ronan had drove him home, like the teenage fantasy he’d never been able to actualize. They didn’t need the radio on after the show, but the light from the dash set them both in an electric blue glow. With the sun finally down the air streaming in through the open windows was cool and fresh. Adam watched him the whole time.

He lived above St. Agnes and Ronan wondered if he’d ever visited the chancel beneath— if he’d ever seen the discoloration of stones and wondered why there was a portion stained. It threw him off for a long moment, but then Adam’s hand was on his, curling over the top so they both clutched at the gear shift. It startled him, but then their fingers slotted together and he couldn’t help but blush and Adam made these little, pained noises when they leaned across the console and licked and nipped and breathed in tandem.

It was like the other boy was slowly tearing open little, scabbed over seams as Ronan held him close by the front of his shirt, nuzzled their faces together like cats, moved to mouth over his closed eyelids, furrowed brow. Ronan could relate. __Small, burning lashes. Repent, repent. The sluggish drip of red.__

“Make me dinner, tonight. I can handle it if I see it. If I come over and you say all the same shit and I look at you and believe you then maybe I won’t care. But… But you can’t fuck them anymore, okay? I don’t care if other people do that, if that’s what they want, but it’s not me. I— I need to just be two people. Ya?”

Ronan had been putting off that dinner. It felt like __a thing.__ Every time Adam had mentioned it it was Dinner, pointedly capitalized. Making a boy you like food, sitting on the couch to watch something after, feeling the draw of the bedroom as the sun had gone down and it was getting late… Ya, it was definitely something. “Spaghetti, with little hotdogs.”

Rona just __knows__ Adam’s smiling across the phone, even though the only proof he has of it is the sudden, effervescent feeling in his stomach. It’s exhilarating and makes him want to puke all at the same time. “I’ll be over after my shift. I… it’ll be good.”

Ronan smiles, twitches, vibrates. “See you soon.”

~~~

It’s not that he’s never been to a grocery store— that’s ridiculous— but he’s never been there for a concrete reason, really. He’s never __gone shopping.__ Usually he just comes here to feed Gansey’s sweet tooth, obnoxiously eat a handful of samples he was only supposed to take one of, and careen down aisles on the back of a cart, crashing into endcaps.

Ronan only ever went out to specifically buy cigarettes and that tended to be at convenience stores while he was gassing up. The scribbled shopping list crumpled in his hand now looks like a child wrote it for their parents and he has less than zero idea of where anything is. “Can’t you just buy a spaghetti dinner and some hotdogs and mix those together?”

Gansey let himself be wrangled into coming, only mostly for the sheer novelty of watching Ronan panic as he looked at the vast array of noodles. Who knew there were so many kinds? “No. I told him I was gonna cook him a dinner, so I’m gonna fuckin’ cook it and it’s gonna be romantic and he’s gonna cry while he sucks my cock after and then we’re gonna get married and move to Montana and you’ll come visit me while I’m pregnant.”

Gansey’s slow to turn his head over, immaculately scruffy eyebrows raising as he throws four different packages of noodles into the cart without looking. Whole wheat. Fresh. Tagliatelle. Angel Hair. One of ‘em’s bound to be right. Ronan looks at them with a glare for a while before turning back to address his friend’s concern with a shrug.

“Dreamt he knocked me up last night. Was all barefoot and glowing. Baby came out with tattoos on its face. Turns out K was the father and Adam left me.” They move on to the next aisle, Gansey stopping to flounder about why they can’t buy a jarred sauce at least before jogging to catch up with Ronan’s quickly disappearing form.

“Do you even know how to cook? I’m pretty sure that cookware set Helen bought us is still in the box.” Why the hotdogs are in a separate refrigerated section with the sandwich meat and cheese, instead of in the meat section with the sausages is beyond Ronan, but somehow parmesan cheese shakers are also here? And that’s on the list too, so he lets it slide.

“N’aw, we took them out. Remember that time your pussy du jour made us french toast the morning after you ate her out so good she saw the universe or some shit?” Gansey makes this little, contemplative noise as he nods slowly and strokes his chin, eyes going far away. He probably remembers the exact pattern of her sundress and her favorite pizza toppings but not her name. They’re weird like that.

Ronan forgoes the footlong monstrosities he’d picked up to make lewd gestures with, figuring he’s going to be cutting them up anyway, so what’s the point? Instead he grabs ones labeled ‘All Beef’ and spends a bit wondering what that means the others are made of. “All I’m saying is, if you give him food poisoning, this date is probably gonna be a lot less romantic and sexual than you’re hoping.”

Gansey breaks out of his reverie around the time Ronan is contemplating whether Adam is more a wholesome, glass of milk with his dinner guy, or a classic two liter of soda to share kinda guy. He admits, the idea of the slightly more kiddish option is utterly endearing and he’d love to lick a milk mustache off Adam’s lips, and that may or may not make his decision for him. “How hard can pasta be, Dick? It’s not like he asked me to make a five course meal complete with palate cleansers.”

Gansey throws a giant bag of Sour Patch Kids, two candy bars, and a box of oatmeal cream pies onto the conveyer belt as they’re checking out, ignoring Ronan’s harsh squint. “What? Maybe you two can Lady and the Tramp one of my Snickers.” Ronan lets them all be scanned as he ponders how sexy it would be to lick chocolate off of Adam’s skin. “I’m for sure staying in tonight. There’s no way I’m missing this.”

Ronan’s pretty sure that manic glee in Gansey’s eyes is unwarranted, but for some reason the muted amusement in the __cashier’s__  eyes starts to slowly erode at that.

~~~

Visiting Matthew is like covering a crack in the dam with a bandaid. Ronan loves few things in this world as much as his baby brother. That’s the problem. Matthew is like a dewdrop made love with a sunbeam and somehow a boy came out of it. Doofy and bright and everything the other Lynch sons just didn’t have the guts or capacity to be.

Ronan would never dream of dumping his problems on the kid. Instead he wears longsleeved shirts so he doesn’t have to catch the watery eyes, plasters on his biggest smile, walks them to the bowling alley with his arm slung round his brother’s shoulders. Ronan bucks the heel of his boot, kicks the kid in the ass with a snort. “Whatcha been up to, you little gremlin?”

When Matthew smiles, his cheeks bunch up so hard his eyes scrunch closed, just visible under the mop of his golden hair. “Well, there’s this festival this weekend— me and the guys have been gearing up. It’s one of those tent cities kind of thing, so we’re getting hot plates and camelbacks and sleeping bags. I don’t know any of the bands, but they’re gonna have this giant wall they want people to make a mural of and a hill just for mud slides and a huge craft tent.”

“Mmm, sounds like a veritable shit show.” Ronan’s smile is all teeth as the automatic doors judder open and that specific, stale air conditioning hits them in the face. Something about bowling alleys— only place in the world that simultaneously have the taste of antiseptic in the air, but smell like sweat. The carpet’s got this polka dot pattern from the 80’s, half the arcade machines on the back wall are broken, the food is a surefire formula for diarrhea. God he loves this place. “Long as I don’t hear about some assholes burning a field down or get called to come talk you down off a bad trip. Got me? I’ll let Declan send you to that St. Agnes boarding school so fast your head will spin. The nuns have been begging to get your sorry ass in there for years.”

Matthew rolls his head __all__ the way around to give him a blank stare, but Ronan just quirks a brow right back as he tosses bills on the counter, waits for their shoes. Then he smacks the kid on the back of his head for good measure and snickers when Matthew gives him the saddest whimpering pout.

“Don’t lose your phone either. We’ve already spent a fortune on them this year. Coulda bought you a fuckin’ car for your birthday if you stopped cracking screens and jumping in pools like a lunatic.” Ronan makes sure to look for the most garish ball available, weight and hole size be damned. He can’t help the little bloom of stupid adoration that warms his belly when Matthew unpacks wristguards.

“Wait, are you actually trying to lecture __me?__ Last time I checked, you just totaled your own car after __losing__ a rental when K kidnapped you to Florida.” Matthew makes sure to be the one to type their names into the machine, having learned from the last few times when Ronan put things like Jenny Talia and Dick Swole on the screen for everyone to see. “I was pretty sure Declan’s eyes were actually gonna pop right out of his face, it was horrifying.”

Matthew’s whole body actually racks with shivers and he makes a noise as he shakes it off, twiddles his fingers in front of the air dryers. Ronan just grunts from where he’s bent over, tying his shoes. Kavinsky really had kidnapped him. He’d passed out with his face in the guy’s armpit and next thing he knows they’re halfway to Disney World with nothing but the sweaty clothes they were wearing and a cooler full of ice cream bars.

Making out on Splash Mountain was fun. Feeding alligators was fun. Snorting some shit that made him piss himself and lose a couple hours of time was not. Having to call Declan and admit he had no idea where their car was, what happened to his wallet, or if K was still alive was actual torture. Kavinsky showed back up in Henrietta a week after Ronan did. He had pictures of the two of them staring at each other on the ride, folded and tucked into his jeans.

For some reason that meant Ronan couldn’t be mad at him.

~~~

He’s thinking about the tremble in Adam’s voice, the warm ghost of his breath, that little bubble of intimacy that came from nowhere behind the garage, the one repeated just the other night. He’s thinking about how Adam seemed like such a careful guy, like he watched and waited before ever diving in, and yet— . It sends tremors across Ronan’s shoulders to think that he got to Adam, that he made the other boy take a small leap of recklessness, even if it only resulted in some feisty, lovely makeouts.

Ronan’s thinking about that and what a dinner could earn him and if Adam’s just that way in private, or if he’s always so contrary— and he’s wondering if he’ll ever get to know because the hotdogs split and blew up in the microwave and the noodles have congealed into the vague shape and texture of a brain and he kind of forgot that sauces generally need spices, so he’s essentially warming ketchup in a pot right now.

He’s not exactly sure how he convinced himself to believe that this would actually go better than it has though. He came to this with all the confidence of someone on a cooking competition show that forgot cakes need time to bake and ice cream is kind of tricky and putting potatoes in a blender gives them the consistency of glue. Maybe he should get some slack because he’s not a professional chef and so it really wasn’t on him to know this stuff, but he kind of thinks he should have known better in general.

At the very least, Gansey stopped cackling and is standing over the stove with him, glasses steamed and hairline shiny with sweat as they survey the small disaster together. Dick got with the program about midway through where Ronan stopped angry slamming things and instead leaned against the sink, arms crossed, face smothered by one hand, shoulders shaking, wet sniffles way too loud against the sudden quiet.

“Hey, hey man. It’s not like it’s inedible— we didn’t have to throw out any pots or start over because it got ruined. Maybe it’s not gonna be the flavor sensation of the year, but like… we’ve never cooked before and you can totally serve this. It’s fine!” Ronan felt like a fucking idiot for getting that worked up, but Gansey just started salting things and getting out fancy table settings and even finding some scented candles in junk drawers to spruce it all up while he just sat around and tried to get a handle on the creeping numbness settling back into the hollow of his bones.

He tried to stave it off— washed his face and stayed in mortified silence for a while— but his hands shook as they stood shoulder to shoulder over the stovetop and did the best they could to make it seem halfway decent. It all looks kind of ridiculous in a serving platter that cost fifty times the price of the food on it, dotted with sprigs of mint from Gansey’s plant because that’s the only kind of garnish that they could find, but it’s finished and the table is set and Ronan’s really hoping the mood lighting makes up for the fact that his pits are a little ripe from the stress sweat, but he doesn’t have time to do anything about it because Adam already texted that he was outside.

“If he already agreed to a date, he knows you’re shit and is coming anyway, so just chill.” Gansey’s smirk has always been charming, but when he puts actual, genuine emotion behind it, there just seems to be no stopping the young heir. It doesn’t do much but make that tremulous sort of terror quake a little more, uneasy, volatile. Why is he doing this? This isn’t him. He’s not Gansey. He should stick to what he knows, what’s kept him alive all these years. In a move that he’s not sure is actual thankfulness or maybe just panic, Ronan can’t help but pull his friend in by the hem of his shirt and kiss and kiss and kiss him. Maybe it’s him saying goodbye.

Gansey hums in interest, gives him a bit of tongue, but pushes him away and tells him to save a little for his fella downstairs. His eyes are gleaming in conspiratorial glee, he reaches out to try and smooth Ronan’s eyebrows, and even as he’s looking __right at him,__ Gansey __doesn’t see.__  It’s still enough to earn him a rare, grunted “Thanks, Dick.” before Ronan is off and into the industrial elevator. Ronan kind of wanted to slap him instead, to scream, ‘ _ _Look at me!’__ but, like usual, he smothered that down.

Now he tries to breathe deep. He adjusts himself in his too tight jeans. He rolls his shoulders like he’s prepping for a boxing match, sniffs himself again and hopes Adam’s one of those guys that likes a little musk. Ronan does. Sweaty guys make his nuts ache and watching Adam strain through his work has made Ronan’s go utterly blue. That’s it, just focus on the concrete. He’s always been good at that. Shatter the scary by being so angry the world quakes. Shake away the fragile something threatening to sprout and stick your fucking dick in someone.  

He’s got a chub almost through sheer force of will when he throws open the door to Monmouth and Adam for sure doesn’t miss it through the thin, grey acid wash denim. It earns him an eyebrow raise but he just shoots back a toothy smile and rasps, “What? I can’t be happy to see you?” Taking in the other boy, he thinks he can do this, because if anyone’s obscene it’s Adam— looking like he just walked out of a shitty porno. Grease smudges on his face and arms. Rumpled white tee. Work jumpsuit unzipped and bunched around his waist. Ronan’s not entirely sure he’s not just tossing between nightmares and a wet dream right now. When was the last time he slept?

“Actually, it kinda looks like you got started without me.” Ronan wants to walk right up and kiss him. Not like the wet, vulnerable tongue sucks he and Gansey just shared. He wants to do what he’s never done, never had the chance for, not even the other night. He wants to be shy and sweet and press a chaste peck to those dry, cracked lips that are trying their damndest not to pull into a smirk, run his nose along Adam’s again, turn his face into the other boy’s neck and be coy before their date. He kind of wants Adam to hold him and speak softly and for the food to be forgotten as they try and doze.

It hits him like a brick and his breath stutters out of him and he falters a second before hooking a thumb in Adam’s waistband instead, tugging him along as he walks backward toward the building. “You jealous, Parrish?” Adam’s skin is warm against his knuckle, his happy trail soft, but gritty, and Ronan’s cock throbs as his eyes water and his stomach wrenches.

Adam lets himself be pulled, though he keeps a careful eye on Ronan’s other fingers, hovering respectfully over his groin without going for a grope. “‘M hungry… and before you say it— no, cock isn’t gonna fill me up, so you better have more on the menu.” It’s delivered with a weary tone, but that stony face is just begging to be playful.

“Don’t be silly, Parrish. Gotta eat your dinner before you get dessert.” The ride up doesn’t take long, but Ronan doesn’t know how much banter he’s got left in him, so it’s silent— the two of them watching the levels go by through the wooden grate. Adam looks like he wants to ask about the building, but doesn’t make any sound as he watches Ronan chew at a thumbnail until it bleeds.

Gansey’s absconded to his bedroom, but not before he put on some remixed, electro swing soundtrack low. Ronan just tries to ignore it as he heads straight to the dining table— a butcher’s block with old, mismatched school chairs in a milky green. He pulls one out for Parrish before plopping himself into the other, one leg crossed underneath himself. Adam reaches out for the serving spoon, but gets his hand slapped away, Ronan shooting him a glare. “Haven’t said Grace yet.”

Adam looks cowed, but in a less reticent and more irritated sort of way. “Okay, whatever.” Ronan clasps his hands together, keeps his eyes open until Adam squeezes his shut after a petulant roll, then presses his lips to the jut of his thumbs as he murmurs the litany. Adam’s __amen__ floats out after a squidge of awkwardness, but then the clack of silverware and slurp of noodles follow.

The food is… well it sure is food. Gansey was right, it’s not inedible. It’s just… strange. Not a combination of flavors most people would choose. Ronan eats his so he has something to do with his hands, so his mouth is kept busy. Adam eats more than half of what was on the serving platter, somehow eating at both a tremendous speed, but with utter precision.

It’s almost unsettling to watch. He doesn’t take the dainty, contemplative bites of the sort of dinner guess the Ganseys were accustomed to, but holds his fork and knife the same— cleans them off each other with ringing clacks, keeps his clothes and napkin immaculate. He is deftly ravenous.

He blushes as Ronan watches him heap a third serving and then makes a point of going slower on that one. It’s been fifteen minutes and they haven’t talked. “No one’s ever cooked for me before... “ Ronan’s not even sure he was supposed to hear it— Adam speaking to his plate, in between mouthfuls, but it startles him out of his rote fugue.

“I mean, I’m sure it’s not even as nice as a family dinner, but—”

“ _ _No one’s__ ever cooked for me before.” Adam lifts his head just enough to meet Ronan’s eyes as he says it, face carefully blank, voice almost angrily assertive.

“Oh.” Ronan swallows hard. Adam goes back to eating. Ronan looks back down at his own plate as he can’t help but think back to the farm. His dad telling ridiculous, outlandish stories to his boys to make them ooh and aah. His mother churning out food like it propagated in the pockets of her apron instead of being prepared. Sweet rolls with cardamom. Oats with lavender. Ham glazed in honey.

She liked to give all her boys little jobs to do to help— one with each meal. Declan would crack eggs in the morning, try to get the twist just right with one hand. Matthew would knead dough in the afternoons, often smelled of sugar and yeast. Ronan liked to do the messy things. Get his hands sticky mixing and forming a meat loaf.

He thinks about all those sun soaked memories, flashing in his mind like a filtered home video. Usually it just serves to make him sadder, but they warm him now, flush his skin with blood. Because now he realizes there’s an alternative. He thinks about Adam, small and freckly and still covered in dirt, alone at a card table, eating something cold out of a tin.

It makes hot prickles go all up and down his spine, makes him angry, though he’s not sure what at. It aggravates the chaotic spray of his emotions. If they weren’t roiling before, they are now. Pinging from empty to overwhelmed to melancholic to fond to searing in pain or want or need he’s not sure. He can’t keep the lid on much longer.

“I can… go. If you want.” Adam had stood up, taken his plate to the sink, and washed it while Ronan picked at the wood grain in the table. He’s leaning against the kitchen island now, ankles hooked around each other, shoulders hitched high.

Ronan stares at him a while, looks down the hall where Gansey’s light is still on, thinks about the bottle of vodka under his bed he told himself he was gonna get rid of and didn’t. “Ya, okay.”

Adam’s face screws up, equal parts surprise and hurt and fury. Raw fury. The kind of thing you read about in books of mythology. The same features that make him eerie. That make him beautiful. He is stunningly terrifying. They don’t twist… it’s just… maybe the lighting changes. Ronan thinks he could watch him shout for hours. “What the fuck?” Adam breathes it out, almost to himself, sweeping his gaze around the empty room before looking back to Ronan, scrubbing his face with his hands and shaking his head. “You were all over me two days ago and now— .”

“So what, hot and cold is exclusively your thing?” Fuck, that wasn’t— . Ronan immediately shrivels, wishing he could control his damn mouth for once. He’d given up on his own emotions, but his body would be a nice thing to get a handle on.

“ _ _Me?__ ” Adam’s eyebrows practically shoot up into his hair and when his scoff transitions into a laugh it’s nearly hysterical. “You waltz into the shop acting like you’re sex on a stick and I should be gagging for your attention, completely ignore me when I give it to you, then come back in begging for a second chance, and now this. What—? What do you want from me?”

 _ _I want you to fix me.__ It’s not a fair thought, and not even one Ronan knew he had until this very moment, but he’d put that on Parrish the first time he saw the other boy. He’d say it’s the fault of every romantic movie ever, but he stopped watching those forever ago. One spectacular person is all that’s been missing from your life. The right fuck will fix everything. Just when you’re at your lowest, the person you need will pick you up. Ronan doesn’t voice an answer.

“Ya, __okay.__ ” The sarcasm is dripping from the parroted words, Adam’s eyes cool even as they blaze. “I don’t have the… anything for this. Whatever this is. I’m gonna tell Boyd to take over your piece of shit, I can’t do this.”

Ronan’s not sure whether it’s masochism or mercy that makes him croak out, “Don’t— .” His voice breaks on it, little and desperate and wet. It’s the only real emotion he’s shown since Adam showed up. Adam drops into a crouch, laces his fingers behind his head, puts his face between his knees and breathes. The slow crooning from the kitchen speakers is almost eerie.

Eventually Adam leaves. Eventually Ronan drifts over to his room. Eventually Gansey appears in the door, takes in the half empty bottle, gives him that __look__ that makes him feel so, so small. “Oh, Ro.” Ronan doesn’t protest as the wrong boy crawls into bed with him, takes off his clothes, slides their skin together.

~~~

__He felt bad about dipping his dirty fingers in the holy water font, apologized in a trembly voice to the immaculate heart of Mary looking over it. There was no way he’d walk past the pews without it. It was cool enough to make his feverish skin pebble when he crossed himself, and somehow that felt like a sign, like a spirit hovering just above him, breath ghosted across his form to let him feel its presence._ _

__The bells rang because it was noon on Sunday, he knew this somewhere, deep down, but he forewent that idea because it was so much more fitting as his own, personal death knell. He was a procession of one, overseeing his own return to on high. He saw his steady approach in his mind, even as he stumbled into the pews over and over, bruising his skin._ _

__He’s not sure if he’s sweating or crying but there’s liquid in his eyes and they sting and blur. He crumples when he falls his knees, not caring for the way the stone scrapes and batters at his bones. He hadn’t thought he was planning anything when he left the house today, but the razor is so present in his pocket and everything feels like it’s clicking into place._ _

__It’s always good to start with Glory Be._ _


	5. Chapter 5

They do what entitled assholes do when their life gets tough— they run away. It’s easy enough. A bottle of booze. A laptop. A bank account. Gansey talks him into someplace tropical. Ronan hates the fucking sweltering sun, but fruity drinks and guys that never wear shirts and the promise of hours spent napping is enough to get him packing anyway.

Mostly that just involves wadding up the clothes on his floor and throwing them into one of Dick’s leather carry on’s, but Ronan intersperses it with intermittently checking his phone. It’s not a behavior he’s used to, to say the least. It makes him feel fidgety, the way he’s always aware of the weight of his cell, to the point where he has to take it out of his pocket and throw it on his bed. But then he’s hypervigilant for the screen to flash, always thinking he sees the light blink out of the corner of his eye.

This is why he hates the damn things in the first place. As though he needs more reasons to be anxious. More tools to fuck shit up. But he can’t help it. Story of his life. He powers it off and on again, just in case his service was shitty. He checks the messaging app because maybe the notification just didn’t go off. He thumbs hard at the screen every time.

K found out he wasn’t invited and now he’s pouting. Ronan really didn’t need the video of him fucking someone else, but it’s nice to get a reminder of why he hasn’t gone back yet. Declan’s packing up and heading back home for the growing season. Felt the need to invite Ronan back to his own goddamn house again. Matthew’s got his arms around a girl and a boy, Ronan’s not sure if any of them are more than friends. Idiot’s got flowers in his hair. Ronan sets that as his wallpaper.

He chews his nails staring at the thread with Adam’s name at the top. __About dinner… I might be out of town for a while… I think I miss you… What are we?... Were we ever?... I think about kissing you, I think about holding you more… Why are you a dick?... I’m a dick.__

He doesn’t type them, but his thumbs hover. His stomach twists, but before he can chicken out, Ronan sends a picture. It’s nothing. He’s not even sure why he does it. He’s just sitting around, wasting time, snaps a photo of his socked toe pushing a toy car around his desk. There’s no accompanying words. Just his dusty blinds and dirty sock and cluttered tabletop.

Gansey comes in every once in awhile to nag him. “Ronan, __come on.__ You can’t keep lying down.” One time he throws a wrapped sandwich at Ronan’s face. The condiments make a wet sound when the wrapper slaps his skin. “You haven’t eaten in two days. It better be finished when I get back.”

He eats it just because he’s not sure he could handle Gansey standing over him, arms crossed, face screwed into that Senator’s Son type of seriousness. He doesn’t chew much. He doesn’t taste anything. It gets to late evening and he’s mostly packed. No toiletries yet. He’ll probably just use Gansey’s toothbrush and pretend he’s sorry about not wearing deodorant and live off hotel soaps.

The sun’s slanting through the windows in that harsh way which’ll only last twenty minutes, but paints the room in an otherworldly way. The filtered orange suddenly makes everything surreal and Ronan’s sure he’s actually dreaming when his phone rings and Adam’s picture is on screen.

He turned his face away when Ronan tried to take it. It’s mostly his ear that’s a bit mangled,— Ronan hasn’t asked why yet— his freckled neck, his dirty t-shirt. He’d reached out his hand to push Ronan away, bunched up his tanktop and brushed against bare skin, soft hair. Ronan leaned into it and Adam’s pinky had stroked hesitant circles. He can never know for sure, but Ronan imagines he’s smiling in the picture.

He doesn’t let himself think on it too long, scrambles across his bed, knocking over his bag and spilling all the clothes out to get to the phone in time. When he hammers the answer prompt, he croaks out a hello so dry and raspy it sounds like he just woke from the dead. Maybe a form of it.

“Don’t talk. I didn’t call to hear you talk. I got somethin’ to say and you’re gonna listen.” Ronan nods, a little frantic, then realizes he has to make an affirmative grunt too. “You’re __infuriating__ and I don’t know why. I deal with assholes all the time, I’m surrounded by them. Usually I can barely tell one from the other. But you— you drive me insane, and I’m so __fucking__ mad at you. You’re not allowed to just come kicking your way into my life, drag me into something, and then drop it. Ah am not a toy. I’m not your plaything. I’m not just around for you to pick up when you’re bored. You made me pay attention and now you gotta deal with it. So __you are__ coming to the shop on Tuesday, you’re taking me to lunch, and you’re gonna text me every other day, even if it’s just a dumb fucking photo of your toe, got it?”

Ronan’s not entirely sure if he’s sweating from excitement or anxiety. He could be drowning right now. The water could be refreshing. All he knows is his breathing is ragged. “Am I allowed to answer now?” He’s just snotty enough to maybe sell himself as not on the edge of a panic attack. Maybe.

“You’re __such__ a dick.”

“Mmn. Good one though. Head’s the right proportion to the shaft. Uncut too.” Adam snorts across the line, devolves into smothered chuckles that make Ronan’s skin feel all tight. He lays back against his sheets, scratches at his chest, feels his eyes sting. It’s a lot.

“Better not be shaved. I hate that. Makes your junk look like uncooked chicken… Who wants to go down on something that looks like it’ll give them salmonella?” Ronan grins, glances down to where his bush is pushing out the waistband of his lowslung jeans. He loves how it makes Gansey gives him side eye. Loves how it makes K stare. Loves to stare at others, dare them to say something when he idly scratches at it.

He shrugs his shoulders, bites his lip, pulls the phone away from his ear long enough to take a snapshot from his perspective and send it. “You’re so bossy, Parrish. Gonna start domming me? Thought you weren’t into that shit… won’t complain if you put me over your knee.”

“You’re the actual worst. Just say you’re gonna pick me up, and I won’t call you out on probably being secretly vanilla.”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“Mmm, don’t play. We both know all you really want is slow, sweaty missionary. Probably wanna make eye contact and come at the same time.”

“Tuesday, noon.”

Adam snorts again, and Ronan blushes. He’d love to have that boy above him, blanketing him with his body, zeroing in the world to just the way they move together. Ronan wants to know if that thick mat of freckles is on his shoulders too— chest, stomach. Would Adam look at him funny, smirk because Ronan likes to bottom? Would he chew Ronan’s lips till they bled? “Ya, okay. Message received. Promise I won’t spill the beans.”

They stay on the phone long after they stop speaking. Ronan lets himself cry, though he keeps it quiet. He gets a pixelated picture of Adam’s ratty shoes on the bottom of a rack of clothes with wheels. He sends one back of the pile of clothes returned to the floor. Last chance.

~~~

“Why aren’t you ready?” There’s resignation in the way he says it— like he wasn’t really expecting anything else. Gansey stands in the doorway, hours later, freshly showered, shaved, primped and plucked for his first class plane ride. It’s morning and Ronan thinks he fell in and out of sleep, but he can’t really be sure.

He sits up, knuckles at his gritty eyes, cracks his neck, and clears his throat. It takes a minute to reorient himself, to take stock of his friend standing with his hip cocked in front of him— the bag of spilled clothes on the floor, his phone beeping that it’s gonna die by his pillow. His limbs are achy, trembly. His shirt is stuck to his back with sweat. His eyes feel dry and itchy. He’s more tired than he can ever remember being— or maybe just in a different way. He feels heavy, sluggish, like he could just sink into the sheets. Usually he feels hollow with the lack of sleep, fragile and wired. This one seems to beckoning him to return, low and sweet.

Ronan’s never wanted to close his eyes more. He’s used to fighting it, fearing what his mind will do when he’s not keeping a tight stranglehold on the messy, jagged workings. But he wasn’t dreaming before, or at least not that he could remember. And facing down Gansey isn’t much of a counter to the siren call of restfulness— one he hasn’t known in a long, long time.

He knows he’s got shit to do though, important shit. He wasn’t just blowing hot air, he’s made his decision. He’s done toeing the line, balancing on the edge, following the wrong path through sheer indecision, and he’s gonna look Gansey in the eye when he does this. He’s gonna give that boy the courtesy that he’s not sure he’s ever received in turn. He’s gonna look and __see.__ “I think you should go on your own. Or with some girl you meet at the terminal. Or, fuck, take Kavinsky and figure out what the hell you two have going on because I think it might be even more messed up than him and me.”

Silence follows— cold and yellow in the morning. It accentuates the must of the building, the stagnation between them. Everything seems so dry. Gansey keeps eye contact for a moment, but then turns his head to look through Ronan’s things instead. He’s so perfect. In all the wrong ways. “I don’t care what’s going down between him and me. I only ever gave a shit about him because of __you—__ because of __us.__ ”

“Don’t— “ Ronan hurls it out as though the force of the words could actually, physically interrupt Gansey, knock him back. Because if it doesn’t stop him, Ronan might just have to get up and do it himself. That’s not something he wants. He’s looking at the guy that he just desperately fucked a few days ago— his one time crush, his mother hen, his sort of friend. Nothing quite fits. But he cares. “Don’t say that like we were ever a thing, because we weren’t.”

Gansey works his jaw, adjusts his glasses, crosses his arms. “I’ve been trying to give you anything— everything you want from me my whole life, and it’s never enough. It’s never been enough for you!” Finally he turns and his eyes are on fire and he’s starting to get that set look that’s all Richard Campbell Gansey III, all the title. “No matter what I do you act like I’m personally ruining your fucking life!” He doesn’t have to raise his voice. This is the man that expects you to listen.

Ronan’s throat is parched and after last night, he’s not got any moisture left to wet it, nor shed any more tears. But everything stings. “I know.” Gansey deflates, instantly. His anger melts into confusion and worry and Ronan’s had enough of that for a lifetime, so this time he’s the one to look away. “You’ve never been able to give me what I wanted… and that’s not fair for either of us. You just don’t have it to give— not to me.”

His hands are shaking, gripping white knuckled at his sheets. His shoulders are so tense they set about twinges in his back. His ass is sweating. “Gansey— I’ve been in love with you for as long as I can remember.” Ronan’s brows knit tight and his throat catches and suddenly something dislodges in his chest. It still feels like something just got cut right the fuck off of him, but also like that thing was swollen and hot and infected. The bleeding helps. “And you love me back, but you’ve never been __in love__ with me. Not even close.” He turns back. He looks at Gansey even though it feels like it might kill him.

“And I thought that was enough. I thought that was __okay.__ But it isn’t! It’s not something either of us should have ever allowed. It’s fucking cruel! It’s made us… this.” Ronan gestures between the two of them, at the feet of space that feels like miles. He gestures at the way they’ve lived together for years and are sometimes total strangers. He gestures at how they play with hurting one another like it’s sport.

“You need to go alone because I need to move out. I need to make space. I need to not be in love with you so we can love each other how friends should— how brothers do. Because we were never meant to be anything more, anything else. And we both knew it, but we both tried anyway.” Gansey __is__ crying. His body keeps moving in little fits and starts like he wants to start stomping around, throwing a tantrum.

Ronan wants to get up and go to him. He wants to take him in his arms and comfort him. He wants to never fight again. He stays right where he is. “Look, I know you know I went away. When— when I— “ __Queen of the rosary, pray for us. Queen of families, pray for us. Queen of peace, pray for us.__ He has to face it. It was real. It happened. It isn’t just some vignette. It’s part of him. “When I hurt myself.”

Gansey’s gone stock still, eyes still streaming, but the frantic energy all dried up. His eyes are wide, like he never could have expected this. Ronan doesn’t blame him. He never thought they’d be here either— have this. They always should have, if they were functioning people. He guesses that’s the point, why it __is__ happening. He wants to function, be a real boy. “Everyone just acted like I went on a fucking retreat or whatever WASP bullshit goes around, but I didn’t just dick off to some random island and try out scarification for some local fun.”

He looks down to the interlacing marks up and down his arms— the raised skin, all shiny smooth. They’re not as puffy as they used to be, not as angry red. They’ll never not be the first thing someone sees when they meet him. He wonders if Adam feels the same way about his ear. “Declan put me in a program, a facility. Slippers and robes and condiment cups with colorful pills. Had it all. I was free to leave whenever I wanted. You remember how long I was gone?”

He doesn’t bother to look up, doesn’t want to have to see if Gansey has a hard time figuring it out. Instead he traces the marks, scratches lightly at them, remembers the thick bandaging from when they were fresh. No stitches. He was too much a coward to make the cuts count. It was all a show. Doctors called it a cry for help. Ronan calls it a fucking farce. “Five months.”

Nearly half a year. Fluorescent lights. Group meetings. Ronan learned more card games than he ever knew could have existed, still plays with himself sometimes. Maybe he can teach Adam Kings in the Corners on a lunch break. “Ya. I needed it and I knew it… It’s a sin to kill yourself, you know that? Not one God’s too swayed into forgiving.”

He thought about that a lot, more than he wants to admit. What if— . He’s not even sure whether he accidentally did it wrong or right. He’s not sure what he was aiming for when he walked over to St. Agnes. The hours leading up seem so fuzzy, even when the act is so clear. “Ronan— .”

“No, listen to me.” Ronan closes his eyes on the plea, voice thin with the begging. He doesn’t do that much. Ever. “I know what it feels like. I can see the signs. That’s something they taught me, just as much as how to climb out. You don’t ever wanna be back there. They don’t wanna have to see you again.”

He still remembers the shock— the shattering of his snotty, punk ass persona when he found out he wasn’t so special-tortured as he thought he was. Ronan Lynch was downright formulaic. They had lists of his symptoms, had met a hundred of him already. “I can do it all over again, if I let myself. I can see it so easy. I’ve been letting it. Because it’s easier. But… I don’t want to. I don’t wanna be like K. I don’t wanna repeat this shitty cycle over and over until I meet the iteration that snuffs me out.”

He’s not gonna say it, but just as much, he doesn’t want to be Gansey. Dick’s cycles aren’t so obviously destructive, aren’t as flashy-brutale, but they’re there, they lead to the same place— maybe just fifteen years later. It’s a slower death. Ronan’s not sure which is more cruel.

Gansey flitting around, self sabotaging, never attaching, just fucking flitting around as long as is proper.  Gansey settling with the one that works on paper. Gansey taking the work that suits the name. Gansey resenting everything. Gansey stepping out on baby and bride. Gansey taking up heavy and heavier drink to cope. Gansey in scandal. Gansey taking the easy way out.

“I’m not gonna go back there. I won’t do it. Not to myself, not to Matthew or Declan. Not to you. For once, I’m gonna make the grownup goddamn decision and take care of myself.” He shrugs, like it’s as simple as deciding that he’s gonna give up gluten. Picking at his nails, shuffling the blankets off his legs, hugging his knees to his chest. “I can’t go with you… but I don’t think you can stay either. Or at least, if you do, then I have to be somewhere else. Maybe just not in the same building, maybe not in the same town or state— I don’t know.”

He looks up to make eye contact again, waits until their eyes meet— until Gansey’s focus. “Go. __Please.__ Go and don’t come back for a while. Don’t call or text. Don’t tell me that you miss me. Go and forget about me. Because that’s what I’m gonna be doing about you. And in a month, a season, a year— when you think about me out of nowhere, by accident, for no reason— say hi.”

It takes a while. They’re breathing hard. The light changes a little and Noah starts to stir somewhere down the hall. The building makes its usual groans and clicks. They don’t get up to hug. They don’t give each other an affirmative bro nod. There’s nothing else said. Gansey simply picks up his bags, calls for a car, looks and looks and looks at Ronan before he finally turns to leave.

Ronan hopes Gansey finally saw him.

~~~

It’s a Tuesday and Ronan got up before noon for the first time in a long time. It’s not like he hasn’t seen the small hours of the morning before— just that when he does, it’s because he hasn’t slept yet. He’s not sure that you can count getting up at ten to make it to the shop at noon the small hours, even with his sleeping schedule, but for him it’s something.

Noah had given him strange looks as he got out of the shower, watched him traipse back to his room and get dressed like Ronan was a poltergeist or pod person that needed to have an eye kept on him. Ronan just stole the half finished coffee from his hands, bumped their hips in greeting, and grunted that he’d be back later.

Noah had immediately gotten out his phone and started texting. Ronan can guess that he’s probably feeding updates to Gansey. It definitely sets about an itch all over his skin, makes him feel eyes weighing on his shoulders, but he does his best to shrug it off, to not let his mind wander and wonder after the spectacular, lonely boy he left behind. There’s one ahead of him, one that’s waiting for his lunch, and besides, Noah could just be phoning the sugar daddy to say he’s got the afternoon free without his roommate around.

The sidewalks are busy when he strikes out— businessmen and students using their free half hours to grab something quick to eat and take a gulp of fresh air before diving back under. The lungful is a bit warm, but sweet— that perfect, inundated temperance that people love the south for. Clouds come often enough to give relief from the bright light, the perfumes of all the different blooms mix into something heady, the crackle of ozone before a storm rolls in pebbles the skin.  

Ronan picks up sandwiches and fried pickles, a cold two liter of ginger ale to share. He’s wearing a thin, ratty tanktop today— quick to sweat and unashamed of the damp curl of dark hair in his armpits being shown off if it means relief. It also shows off his scars. He’s thought about letting Adam in on them, maybe trading their tale for his fella’s mangled ear. The intimacy is frightening, but something he feels okay to admit he’s been craving. At least to himself.

The cashier stares. People on the streets occasionally double take. Ronan flashes them all a grin, gives a few obnoxious finger guns, turns down a back alley when he sees a white Mitsubishi prowling main street. That’s a problem for another day, one when he’s on less shaky ground. One life altering step at a time.

It takes a bit with his altered route through kitschy strip mall parking lots, but eventually he makes it to the fringes of town, where the buildings are spread wider and crabgrass grows wild out of every nook and crannie. The garage has its doors raised up to let the pleasant day in as the guys and girls work on mostly trucks, but the occasional SUV, and one, ridiculous luxury vehicle. Some hip hop remix bs is blaring from the radio and there’s the occasional laughs as someone tries to sing along. Ronan’s eyes zero in on his guy immediately.

Adam looks like a black and white photograph about the idealism of the 50’s— leaned back against the hood, propped on his elbows, artfully oil stained and sweaty— greaser chic. He doesn’t notice Ronan for a while, and so unknowingly invites himself to be watched. He’s careful, always careful, never fully open, but he’s letting his ease and happiness seep through. It’s clear he feels comfortable here, enjoys these people, humming along the tune and bopping his head ever so slightly. His long, rough fingers idly play with a rag, his hips are tantalizingly tilted, he’s got a hole in the toe of his shoe.

Ronan’s holding his breath and he’s not sure why, but it catches even higher in his chest when Adam shakes his head and then catches sight of him. Ronan starts walking before Adam even starts turning towards him and his eyes light up and he __smiles__ when he sees Ronan approaching. It’s like diving head first into a crystal clear pond on a hot, hot day. The sweet, brisk relief. The instant goosebumps. The way you suddenly feel like you can breathe again. The sudden urge to just float on your back and bask in it.

Ronan can’t believe it’s actually fucking happening to him. He wants to look over his shoulder and see if there’s some lovely thing in a summer dress instead of his own retired skate rat in skinny jeans. His chest gets tight and his heart skips a beat and he can feel his ears throbbing with his pulse. It’s so damn idiotic, but suddenly his feet pick up pace without him meaning it and he’s desperate to just be there.

He doesn’t run, but only barely.

Adam pushes himself up, expression sobering, and takes the full brunt of Ronan just crashing into him, full tilt. His arms hesitate, jerk a little before coming up to wrap around Ronan’s shoulders, holding him there, pulling his face in a little tighter as the other boy breathes him in— presses into his neck and hums. “Well hey there. ‘S alright, I gotcha.” Ronan trembles as he drops their lunch on the car in favor of tangling his hands all in the front of Adam’s uniform, twisting and tugging.

He pulls just far enough away to needily smash their lips together, snorting a frustrated breath out his nose when he has to lick across the seam of Adam’s lips a couple times before they open. But his boy does relent, and soon enough he’s being ever so slightly dipped as Adam lays into him, smothering him in attention and affection as they kiss and kiss and kiss. Ronan feels lightheaded, but the pressure on his ribcage finally abates and he __whines__ with it.

Adam bites and sucks— possessive and demanding and overeager. His fingers grip tight, but not enough to bruise. He takes the lead, even though he’s definitely less experienced, and dictates the depth, the pace. Ronan feels like a moonflower that had forgotten what it was to see the night. Without needing to pull Adam in any longer, his hands are free to travel up the other boy’s neck to tangle in his hair, tugging at the soft, damp locks and scratching at his scalp.

He drinks it all in and fucking __blooms.__ When they break apart for air Adam’s eyes are wide and wild and pretty much, surely grey. Ronan butts their heads together, rubs the bridges of their noses, pecks their lips. “If I said you were a sight for sore eyes, would you believe it wasn’t just a line?” His voice is so, so dry and naked, he can’t help but blush at the sound of it, but Ronan makes sure to keep looking Adam in the eye, brows raised with genuine wonder.

“After that kiss? I could believe a lot of things.” It’s charming, sure, but the tone is also ruefully, vulnerably true. Ronan sees that confirmed in the bit of skittish fear keeping Adam’s eyes opened wide and with that, he does what he’s never done before— Ronan holds out his hand for the taking. They both look at it, outstretched and waiting, and for a tense moment, nothing else happens. But before he can pull it away, Adam meets him, twines their fingers, clutches it tight.

Ronan grabs their food, Adam grabs the soda, and they tug each other towards the back, out to where they’ll be alone. They don’t let go as they sit, backs to the wall. They don’t let go as taking out and unwrapping the food takes twice as long. They don’t let go when the sandwiches slop their condiments out being eaten with one hand. “Adam?”

“Ya?”

“Would you believe me if I said I think I’m in love with you?”

“.... Ya.”

“Okay…. Adam?”

“Ya?”

“I’m pretty sure you’re gonna fall in love with me too.”

Adam snorts, looks away, but he doesn’t let go. Ronan steals the first swig straight from the soda bottle and sighs in contentment. The words sit heavy in the air, keeping conversation away for a minute, two, five. They alternate staring at their food, the drifting clouds, the occasional car that rolls on down the street. The chatter from the garage floats over at them, muffled— sounding almost like a canned audience for some show. Their palms start to get really, very sweaty.  

Adam starts to get anxious.

Ronan slowly leans away, raises a leg, farts loudly.

They make eye contact— Adam’s a gorgeous, steely blue— Ronan starts to laugh. “What is even wrong with you?” Adam’s face is furious but his shoulders are shaking with his smothered laughter and Ronan is grinning so wide his cheeks hurt.

“What’s wrong with you? You’re the one that asked me out.” Adam throws a pickle at him and Ronan catches it in his teeth, chomping it obnoxiously, mouth open. The rest comes easy after that. They decide the roast beef is better than the turkey. They share salty kisses. Adam belches in Ronan’s ear in retaliation. Ronan wins out the pissing contest by giving a grotesque, obvious hickey right under the hinge of Adam’s jaw.

As they’re gathering the garbage, brushing dirt off their asses, dithering before going back inside, Adam casts his eyes to the ground, mutters in a way Ronan’s not sure whether or not he’s meant to hear, “I believe you, Lynch.”

__Hail Mary, full of grace._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I can't believe you read this whole, silly thing. I really, genuinely hope you found it worth your time. I poured a lot into this in a really weird time of my life. I hope it all makes some sort of sense and isn't just a discombobulated mess. And if it is, well, I at least hope it was a fun one.


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